(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all mistakes found.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing intially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.

TERTULLIAN.

THE FIVE BOOKS AGAINST MARCION, BOOKS I-III.

[TRANSLATED BY DR. HOLMES.]

BOOK I.(1)

WHEREIN IS DESCRIBED THE GOD OF MARCION. HE IS SHOWN TO BE UTTERLY WANTING
IN ALL THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE TRUE GOD.

CHAP. I.--PREFACE. REASON FOR A NEW WORK. PONTUS LENDS ITS ROUGH CHARACTER
TO THE HERETIC MARCION, A NATIVE. HIS HERESY CHARACTERIZED IN A BRIEF
INVECTIVE.

   WHATEVER in times past(1) we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is
from the present moment no longer to be accounted of.(3) It is a new work
which we are undertaking in lieu of the old one.(4) My original tract, as
too hurriedly composed, I had subsequently superseded by a fuller treatise.
This latter I lost, before it was completely published, by the fraud of a
person who was then a brother,(5) but became afterwards an apostate. He, as
it happened, had transcribed a portion of it, full of mistakes, and then
published it. The necessity thus arose for an amended work; and the
occasion of the new edition induced me to make a considerable addition to
the treatise. This present text,(6) therefore, of my work--which is the
third as superseding(7) the second, but henceforward to be considered the
first instead of the third--renders a preface necessary to this issue of
the tract itself that no reader may be perplexed, if he should by chance
fall in with the various forms of it which are scattered about.

   The Euxine Sea, as it is called, is self-contradictory in its nature,
and deceptive in its name.(8) As you would not account it hospitable from
its situation, so is it severed from our more civilised waters by a certain
stigma which attaches to its barbarous character. The fiercest nations
inhabit it, if indeed it can be called habitation, when life is passed in
waggons. They have no fixed abode; their life has(9) no germ of
civilisation; they indulge their libidinous desires without restraint, and
for the most part naked. Moreover, when they gratify secret lust, they hang
up their quivers on their car-yokes,(10) to warn off the curious and rash
observer. Thus without a blush do they prostitute their weapons of war. The
dead bodies of their parents they cut up with their sheep, and devour at
their feasts. They who have not died so as to become food for others, are
thought to have died an accursed death. Their women are not by their sex
softened to modesty. They uncover the breast, from which they suspend their
battle-axes, and prefer warfare to marriage. In their climate, too, there
is the same rude nature.(11) The day-time is never clear, the  sun never
cheerful;(12) the sky is uniformly cloudy; the whole year is wintry; the
only wind that blows is the angry North. Waters melt only by fires; their
rivers flow not by reason of the ice; their mountains are covered(13) with
heaps of snow. All things are torpid, all stiff with cold. Nothing there
has the glow(14) of life, but that ferocity which has given to scenic plays
their stories of the sacrifices(15) of the Taurians, and the loves(16) of
the Colchians, and the torments(17) of the Caucasus. Nothing, however, in
Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born there,
fouler than any Scythian, more roving than the waggon-life(1) of the
Sarmatian, more inhuman than the Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon,
darker than the cloud,(2) (of Pontus) colder than its winter, more brittle
than its ice, more deceitful than the Ister, more craggy than Caucasus.
Nay(3) more, the true Prometheus, Almighty God, is mangled(4) by Marcion's
blasphemies. Marcion is more savage than even the beasts of that barbarous
region. For what beaver was ever a greater emasculator(5) than he who has
abolished the nuptial bond? What Pontic mouse ever had such gnawing powers
as he who has gnawed the Gospels to pieces? Verily, O Euxine, thou hast
produced a monster more credible to philosophers than to Christians. For
the cynic Diogenes used to go about, lantern in hand, at mid-day to find a
man; whereas Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the
God whom he had found. His disciples will not deny that his first faith he
held along with ourselves; a letter of his own (6) proves this; so that for
the future(7) a heretic may from his case(8) be designated as one who,
forsaking that which was prior, afterwards  chose out for himself that
which was not in  times past.(9) For in as far as what was delivered in
times past and from the beginning will be held as truth, in so far will
that be accounted heresy which is brought in later. But another brief
treatise(10) will maintain this position against heretics, who ought to be
refuted even without a consideration of their doctrines, on the ground that
they are heretical by reason of the novelty of their opinions. Now, so far
as any controversy is to be admitted, I will for the time(11) (lest our
compendious principle of novelty, being called in on all occasions to our
aid, should be imputed to want of confidence) begin with setting forth our
adversary's rule of belief, that it may escape no one what our main
contention is to be.

CHAP. II.--MARCION, AIDED BY CERDON,  TEACHES A DUALITY OF GODS; HOW HE
CONSTRUCTED THIS HERESY OF AN EVIL AND A GOOD GOD.

   The heretic of Pontus introduces two Gods, like the twin Symplegades of
his own shipwreck: One whom it was impossible to deny, i.e. our Creator;
and one whom he will never be able to prove, i.e. his own god. The unhappy
man gained(12) the first idea(13) of his conceit from the simple passage of
our Lord's saying, which has reference to human beings and not divine ones,
wherein He disposes of those examples of a good tree and a corrupt one;(14)
how that "the good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither the
corrupt tree good fruit." Which means, that an honest mind and good faith
cannot produce evil deeds, any more than an evil disposition can produce
good deeds. Now (like many other persons now-a-days, especially those who
have an heretical proclivity), while morbidly brooding(15) over the
question of the origin of evil, his perception became blunted by the very
irregularity of his researches; and when he found the Creator declaring, "I
am He that createth evil,"(16) inasmuch as he had already concluded from
other arguments, which are satisfactory to every perverted mind, that God
is the author of evil, so he now applied to the Creator the figure of the
corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil,(17) and then
presumed that there ought to be another god, after the analogy of the good
tree producing its good fruit. Accordingly, finding in Christ a different
disposition, as it were--one of a simple and pure benevolence(18)--
differing from the Creator, he readily argued that in his Christ had been
revealed a new and strange(19) divinity; and then with a little leaven he
leavened the whole lump of the faith, flavouring it with the acidity of his
own heresy.

   He had, moreover, in one(20) Cerdon an abettor of this blasphemy,--a
circumstance which made them the more readily think that they saw most
clearly their two gods, blind though they were; for, in truth, they had not
seen the one God with soundness of faith.(21) To men of diseased vision
even one lamp looks like many. One of his gods, therefore, whom he was
obliged to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming his attributes in the
matter of evil; the other, whom he laboured so hard to devise, he
constructed, laying his  foundation(1) in the principle of good. In  what
articles(2) he arranged these natures, we show by our own refutations of
them.

CHAP. III.--THE UNITY OF GOD. HE IS THE SUPREME BEING, AND THERE CANNOT BE
A SECOND SUPREME.

   The principal, and indeed(3) the whole, contention lies in the point of
number: whether two Gods may be admitted, by poetic licence (if they must
be),(4) or pictorial fancy, or by the third process, as we must now add,(5)
of heretical pravity. But the Christian verity has distinctly declared this
principle, "God is not, if He is not one;" because we more properly believe
that that has no existence which is not as it ought to be. In order,
however, that you may know that God is one, ask what God is, and you will
find Him to be not otherwise than one. So far as a human being can form a
definition of God, I adduce one which the conscience of all men will also
acknowledge,--that God is the great Supreme existing in eternity,
unbegotten, unmade without beginning, without end. For such a condition as
this must needs be ascribed to that eternity which makes God to be the
great Supreme, because for such a purpose as this is this very attribute(6)
in God; and so on as to the other qualities: so that God is the great
Supreme in form and in reason, and in might and in power.(7) Now, since all
are agreed on. this point (because nobody will deny that God  is in some
sense(8) the great Supreme, except the man who shall be able to pronounce
the opposite opinion, that God is but some inferior being, in order that he
may deny God by robbing Him of an attribute of God), what must be the
condition of the great Supreme Himself? Surely it must be that nothing is
equal to Him, i.e. that there is no other great supreme; because, if there
were, He would have an equal; and if He had an equal, He would be no longer
the great Supreme, now that the condition and (so to say) our law, which
permits nothing to be equal to the great Supreme, is subverted. That Being,
then, which is the  great Supreme, must needs be unique,(9) by having no
equal, and so not ceasing to be the great Supreme. Therefore He will not
otherwise exist than by the condition whereby He has His being; that is, by
His absolute uniqueness. Since, then, God is the great Supreme, our
Christian verity has rightly declared,(10) "God is not, if He is not one."
Not as if we doubted His being God, by saying, He is not, if He is not one;
but because we define Him, in whose being we thoroughly believe, to be that
without which He is not God; that is to say, the great Supreme. But
then(11)` the great Supreme must needs be unique. This Unique Being,
therefore, will be God--not otherwise God than as the great Supreme; and
not otherwise the great Supreme than as having no equal; and not otherwise
having no equal than as being Unique. Whatever other god, then, you may
introduce, you will at least be unable to maintain his divinity under any
other guise,(12) than by ascribing to him too the property of Godhead--both
eternity and supremacy over all. How, therefore, can two great Supremes co-
exist, when this is the attribute of the Supreme Being, to have no equal,--
an attribute which belongs to One alone, and can by no means exist in two?

CHAP. IV..--DEFENCE OF THE DIVINE UNITY AGAINST OBJECTION.  NO ANALOGY
BETWEEN HUMAN POWERS AND GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. THE OBJECTION OTHERWISE
UNTENABLE, FOR WHY STOP AT TWO GODS?

   But some one may contend that two great Supremes may exist, distinct
and separate in their own departments; and may even adduce, as an example,
the kingdoms of the world, which, though they are so many in number, are
yet supreme in their several regions. Such  a man will suppose that human
circumstances are always comparable with divine ones. Now, if this mode of
reasoning be at all tolerable, what is to prevent our introducing, I will
not say a third god or a fourth, but as many as there are kings of the
earth? Now it is God that is in question, whose main property it is to
admit of no comparison with Himself. Nature itself, therefore, if not an
Isaiah, or rather God speaking by Isaiah, will deprecatingly ask, "To whom
will ye liken me?"(13) Human circumstances may perhaps be compared with
divine ones, but they may not be with God. God is one thing, and what
belongs to God is another thing. Once more:(14) you who apply the example
of a king, as a great supreme, take care that you can use it properly. For
although a king is supreme on his throne next to God, he is still inferior
to God; and when he is compared with God, he will be dislodged(2) from that
great supremacy which is transferred to God. Now, this being the case, how
will you employ in a comparison with God an object as your example, which
fails(2) in all the purposes which belong to a comparison? Why, when
supreme power among kings cannot evidently be multifarious, but only unique
and singular, is an exception made in the case of Him (of all others)(3)
who is King of kings, and (from the exceeding greatness of His power, and
the subjection of all other ranks(4) to Him) the very summit,(5) as it
were, of dominion? But even in the case of rulers of that other form of
government, where they one by one preside in a union of authority, if with
their petty(6) prerogatives of royalty, so to say, they be brought on all
points(7) into such a comparison with one another as shall make it clear
which of them is superior in the essential features(8) and powers of
royalty, it must needs follow that the supreme majesty will redound(9) to
one alone,--all the others being gradually, by the issue of the comparison,
removed and excluded from the supreme authority. Thus, although, when
spread out in several hands, supreme authority seems to be multifarious,
yet in its own powers, nature, and condition, it is unique. It follows,
then, that if two gods are compared, as two kings and two supreme
authorities, the concentration of authority must necessarily, according to
the meaning of the comparison, be conceded to one of the two; because it is
clear from his own superiority that he is the supreme, his rival being now
vanquished, and proved to be not the greater, however great. Now, from this
failure of his rival, the other is unique in power, possessing a certain
solitude, as it were, in his singular pre-eminence. The inevitable
conclusion at which we arrive, then, on this point is this: either we must
deny that God is the great Supreme, which no wise man will allow himself to
do; or say that God has no one else with whom to share His power.

CHAP. V.--THE DUAL PRINCIPLE FALLS TO THE GROUND; PLURALITY OF GODS, OF
WHATEVER NUMBER, MORE CONSISTENT.  ABSURDITY AND INJURY TO PIETY RESULTING
FROM MARCION'S DUALITY.

   But on what principle did Marcion confine his supreme powers to two? I
would first ask, If there be two, why not more? Because if number be
compatible with the substance of Deity, the richer you make it in number
the better. Valentinus was more consistent and more liberal; for he, having
once imagined two deities, Bythos and Sige,(10) poured forth a swarm of
divine essences, a brood of no less than thirty AEgons, like the sow of
AEneas.(11) Now, whatever principle refuses to admit several supreme
begins, the same must reject even two, for there is plurality in the very
lowest number after one. After unity, number commences. So, again, the same
principle which could admit two could admit more. After two, multitude
begins, now that one is exceeded. In short, we feel that reason herself
expressly(12) forbids the belief in more gods than one, because the self-
same rule lays down one God and not two, which declares that God must be a
Being to which, as the great Supreme, nothing is equal; and that Being to
which nothing is equal must, moreover, be unique. But further, what can be
the use or advantage in supposing two supreme beings, two co-ordinate(13)
powers? What numerical difference could there be when two equals differ not
from one? For that thing which is the same in two is one. Even if there
were several equals, all would be just as much one, because, as equals,
they would not differ one from another. So, if of two beings neither
differs from the other, since both of them are on the supposition(14)
supreme, both being gods, neither of them is more excellent than the other;
and so, having no pre-eminence, their numerical distinction(16) has no
reason in it. Number, moreover, in the Deity ought to be consistent with
the highest reason, or else His worship would be brought into doubt. For
consider(16) now, if, when I saw two Gods before me (who, being both
Supreme Beings, were equal to each other), I were to worship them both,
what should I be doing? I should be much afraid that the abundance of my
homage would be deemed superstition rather than piety. Because, as both of
them are so equal and are both included in either of the two, I might serve
them both acceptably in only one; and by this very means I should attest
their equality and unity, provided that I worshipped them mutually the one
in the other, because in the one both are present to me. If I were to
worship one of the two, I should be equally conscious of seeming to pour
contempt on the uselessness of a numerical distinction, which was
superfluous, because it indicated no difference; in other words, I should
think it the safer course to worship neither of these two Gods than one of
them with some scruple of conscience, or both of them to none effect.

CHAP. VI.--MARCION UNTRUE TO HIS THEORY. HE PRETENDS THAT HIS GODS ARE
EQUAL, BUT HE REALLY MAKES THEM DIVERSE. THEN, ALLOWING THEIR DIVINITY,
DENIES THIS DIVERSITY.

   Thus far our discussion seems to imply that Marcion makes his two gods
equal. For while we have been maintaining that God ought to be believed as
the one only great Supreme Being, excluding from Him every possibility(1)
of equality, we have treated of these topics on the assumption of two equal
Gods; but nevertheless, by teaching that no equals can exist according to
the law(2) of the Supreme Being, we have sufficiently affirmed the
impossibility that two equals should exist. For the rest, however,(3) we
know full well (4) that Marcion makes his gods unequal: one judicial,
harsh, mighty in war; the other mild, placid, and simply(5) good and
excellent. Let us with similar care consider also this aspect of the
question, whether diversity (in the Godhead) can at any rate contain two,
since equality therein failed to do so. Here again the same rule about the
great Supreme will protect us, inasmuch as it settles(6) the entire
condition of the Godhead. Now, challenging, and in a certain sense
arresting(7) the meaning of our adversary, who does not deny that the
Creator is God, I most fairly object(8) against him that he has no room for
any diversity in his gods, because, having once confessed that they are on
a par,(9) he cannot now pronounce them different; not indeed that human
beings may not be very different under the same designation, be because the
Divine Being can be neither said nor believed to be God, except as the
great Supreme. Since, therefore, he is obliged to acknowledge that the God
whom he does not deny is the great Supreme, it is inadmissible that he
should predicate of the Supreme Being such a diminution as should subject
Him to another Supreme Being. For He ceases (to be Supreme), if He becomes
subject to any. Besides, it is not the characteristic of God to cease from
any attribute(10) of His divinity--say, from His supremacy. For at this
rate the supremacy would be endangered even in Marcion's more powerful god,
if it were capable of depreciation in the Creator. When, therefore, two
gods are pronounced to be two great Supremes, it must needs follow that
neither of them is greater or less than the other, neither of them loftier
or lowlier than the other. If you deny(11) him to be God whom you call
inferior, you deny(11) the supremacy of this inferior being. But when you
confessed both gods to be divine, you confessed then both to be supreme.
Nothing will you be able to take away from either of them; nothing will you
be able to add. By allowing their divinity, you have denied their
diversity.

CHAP. VII.--OTHER BEINGS BESIDES GOD ARE IN SCRIPTURE CALLED GOD. THIS
OBJECTION FRIVOLOUS, FOR IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF NAMES. THE DIVINE ESSENCE
IS THE THING AT ISSUE. HERESY, IN ITS GENERAL TERMS, THUS FAR TREATED.

   But this argument you will try to shake with an objection from the name
of God, by alleging that that name is a vague(12) one, and applied to other
beings also; as it is written, "God standeth in the congregation of the
mighty;(13) He judgeth among the gods." And again, "I have said, Ye are
gods."(14) As therefore the attribute of supremacy would be inappropriate
to these, although they are called gods, so is it to the Creator. This is a
foolish objection; and my answer to it is, that its author fails to
consider that quite as strong an objection might be urged against the
(superior) god of Marcion: he too is called god, but is not on that account
proved to be divine, as neither are angels nor men, the Creator's handwork.
If an identity of names affords a presumption in support of equality of
condition, how often do worthless menials strut insolently in the names of
kings--your Alexanders, Caesars, and Pompeys!(15) This fact, however, does
not detract from the real attributes of the royal persons, Nay more, the
very idols of the Gentiles are called gods. Yet not one of them is divine
because he is called a god. It is not, therefore, for the name of god, for
its sound or its written form, that I am claiming the supremacy in the
Creator, but for the essence(1) to which the name belongs; and when I find
that essence alone is unbegotten and unmade--alone eternal, and the maker
of all things--it is not to its name, but its state, not to its
designation, but its condition, that I ascribe and appropriate the
attribute of the supremacy. And so, because the essence to which I ascribe
it has come(2) to be called god, you suppose that I ascribe it to the name,
because I must needs use a name to express the essence, of which indeed
that Being consists who is called God, and who is accounted the great
Supreme because of His essence, not from His name. In short, Marcion
himself, when he imputes this character to his god, imputes it to the
nature,(3) not to the word. That supremacy, then, which we ascribe to God
in consideration of His essence, and not because of His name, ought, as we
maintain, to be equal(4) in both the beings who consist of that substance
for which the name of God is given; because, in as far as they are called
gods (i.e. supreme beings, on the strength, of course, of their unbegotten
and eternal, and therefore great and supreme essence), in so far the
attribute of being the great Supreme cannot be regarded as less or worse in
one than in another great Supreme. If the happiness, and sublimity, and
perfection(5) of the Supreme Being shall hold good of Marcion's god, it
will equally so of ours; and if not of ours, it will equally not hold of
Marcion's. Therefore two supreme beings will be neither equal nor unequal:
not equal, because the principle which we have just expounded, that the
Surpeme Being admits of no comparison with Himself, forbids it; not
unequal, because another principle meets us respecting the Supreme Being,
that He is capable of no diminution. So, Marcion, you are caught(6) in the
midst of your own Pontic tide. The waves of truth overwhelm you on every
side. You can neither set up equal gods nor unequal ones. For there are not
two; so far as the question of number is properly concerned. Although the
whole matter of the two gods is at issue, we have yet confined our
discussion to certain bounds, within which we shall now have to contend
about separate peculiarities.

CHAP. VIII.--SPECIFIC POINTS. THE NOVELTY OF MARCION'S GOD FATAL TO HIS
PRETENSIONS. GOD IS FROM EVERLASTING, HE CANNOT BE IN ANY WISE NEW.

   In the first place, how arrogantly do the Marcionites build up their
stupid system,(7) bringing forward a new god, as if we were ashamed of the
old one! So schoolboys are proud of their new shoes, but their old master
beats their strutting vanity out of them. Now when I hear of a new god,(8)
who, in the old world and in the old time and under the old god was unknown
and unheard of; whom, (accounted as no one through such long centuries
back, and ancient in men's very ignorance of him),(9) a certain "Jesus
Christ," and none else revealed; whom Christ revealed, they say--Christ
himself new, according to them, even, in ancient names--I feel grateful for
this conceit(10) of theirs. For by its help I shall at once be able to
prove the heresy of their tenet of a new deity. It will turn out to be such
a novelty "as has made gods even for the heathen by some new and yet again
and ever new title(12) for each several deification. What new god is there,
except a false one? Not even Saturn will be proved to be a god by all his
ancient fame, because it was a novel pretence which some time or other
produced even him, when it first gave him godship.(13) On the contrary,
living and perfect(14) Deity has its origin(15) neither in novelty nor in
antiquity, but in its own true nature. Eternity has no time. It is itself
all time. It acts; it cannot then suffer. It cannot be born, therefore it
lacks age. God, if old, forfeits the eternity that is to come; if new, the
eternity which is past.(16) The newness bears witness to a beginning; the
oldness threatens an end. God, moreover, is as independent of beginning and
end as He is of time, which is only the arbiter and measurer of a beginning
and an end.

CHAP. IX.--MARCION'S GNOSTIC PRETENSIONS VAIN, FOR THE TRUE GOD IS NEITHER
UNKNOWN NOR UNCERTAIN. THE CREATOR, WHOM HE OWNS TO BE GOD, ALONE SUPPLIES
AN INDUCTION, BY WHICH TO JUDGE OF THE TRUE GOD.

   Now I know full well by what perceptive faculty they boast of their new
god; even their knowledge.(1) It is, however, this very discovery of a
novel thing--so striking to common minds--as well as the natural
gratification which is inherent in novelty, that I wanted to refute, and
thence further to challenge a proof of this unknown god. For him whom by
their knowledge(2) they present to us as new, they prove to have been
unknown previous to that knowledge. Let us keep, within the strict limits
and measure of our argument. Convince me there could have been an unknown
god. I find, no doubt,(3) that altars have been lavished on unknown gods;
that, however, is the idolatry of Athens. And on uncertain gods; but that,
too, is only Roman superstition. Furthermore, uncertain gods are not well
known, because no certainty about them exists; and because of this
uncertainty they are therefore unknown. Now, which of these two titles
shall we carve for Marcion's god? Both, I suppose, as for a being who is
still uncertain, and was formerly unknown. For inasmuch as the Creator,
being a known God, caused him to be unknown; so, as being a certain God, he
made him to be uncertain. But I will not go so far out of my way, as to
say:(4) If God was unknown and concealed, He was overshadowed in such a
region of darkness, as must have been itself new and unknown, and be even
now likewise uncertain--some immense region indeed, one undoubtedly greater
than the God whom it concealed. But I will briefly state my subject, and
afterwards most fully pursue it, promising that God neither could have
been, nor ought to have been, unknown. Could not have been, because of His
greatness; ought not to have been, because of His goodness, especially as
He is (supposed, by Marcion) more excellent in both these attributes than
our Creator. Since, however, I observe that in some points the proof of
every new and heretofore unknown god ought, for its test,(5) to be compared
to the form of the Creator, it will be my duty(6) first of all to show that
this very course is adopted by me in a settled plan,(7) such as I might
with greater confidence(8) use in support of my argument. Before every
other consideration, (let me ask) how it happens that you,(9) who
acknowledge(10) the Creator to be God, and from your knowledge confess Him
to be prior in existence, do not know that the other god should be examined
by you in exactly the same course of investigation which has taught you how
to find out a god in the first case? Every prior thing has furnished the
rule for the latter. In the present question two gods are propounded, the
unknown and the known. Concerning the known there is no(11) question. It is
plain that He exists, else He would not be known. The dispute is concerning
the unknown god. Possibly he has no existence; because, if he had, he would
have been known. Now that which, so long as it is unknown, is an object to
be questioned, is an uncertainty so long as it remains thus questionable;
and all the while it is in this state of uncertainty, it possibly has no
existence at all. You have a god who is so far certain, as he is known; and
uncertain, as unknown. This being the case, does it appear to you to be
justly defensible, that uncertainties should be submitted for proof to the
rule, and form, and standard of certainties? Now, if to the subject before
us, which is in itself full of uncertainty thus far, there be applied also
arguments(12) derived from uncertainties, we shall be involved in such a
series of questions arising out of our treatment of these same uncertain
arguments, as shall by reason of their uncertainty be dangerous to the
faith, and we shall drift into those insoluble questions which the apostle
has no affection for. If, again,(13) in things wherein there is found a
diversity of condition, they shall prejudge, as no doubt they will,(14)
uncertain, doubtful, and intricate points, by the certain, undoubted, and
clear sides(15) of their rule, it will probably happen that(16) (those
points) will not be submitted to the standard of certainties for
determination, as being freed by the diversity of their essential
condition(17) from the application of such a standard in all other
respects. As, therefore, it is two gods which are the subject of our
proposition, their essential condition must be the same in both. For, as
concerns their divinity, they are both unbegotten, unmade, eternal. This
will be their essential condition. All other points Marcion himself seems
to have made, light of,(1) for he has placed them in a different(2)
category. They are subsequent in the order of treatment; indeed, they will
not have to be brought into the discussion,(3) since on the essential
condition there is no dispute. Now there is this absence of our dispute,
because they are both of them gods. Those things, therefore, whose
community of condition is evident, will, when brought to a test on the
ground of that common condition,(4) have to be submitted, although they are
uncertain, to the standard(5) of those certainties with which they are
classed in the community of their essential condition, so as on this
account to share also in their manner of proof. I shall therefore
contend(6) with the greatest confidence that he is not God who is to-day
uncertain, because he has been hitherto unknown; for of whomsoever it is
evident that he is God, from this very fact it is (equally) evident, that
he never has been unknown, and therefore never uncertain.

CHAP. X.--THE CREATOR WAS KNOWN AS THE TRUE GOD FROM THE FIRST BY HIS
CREATION. ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE SOUL AND CONSCIENCE OF MAN BEFORE HE WAS
REVEALED BY MOSES.

   For indeed, as the Creator of all things, He was from the beginning
discovered equally with them, they having been themselves manifested that
He might become known as God. For although Moses, some long while
afterwards, seems to have been the first to introduce the knowledge of(7)
the God of the universe in the temple of his writings, yet the birthday of
that knowledge must not on that account be reckoned from the Pentateuch.
For the volume of Moses does not at all initiate(8) the knowledge of the
Creator, but from the first gives out that it is to be traced from Paradise
and Adam, not from Egypt and Moses. The greater part, therefore,(9) of the
human race, although they knew not even the name of Moses, much less his
writings, yet knew the God of Moses; and even when idolatry overshadowed
the world with its extreme prevalence, men still spoke of Him separately by
His own name as God, and the God of gods, and said, "If God grant," and,
"As God pleases," and, "I commend you to God."(10) Reflect, then, whether
they knew Him, of whom they testify that He can do all things. To none of
the writings of Moses do they owe this. The soul was before prophecy.(11)
From the beginning the knowledge of God is the dowry of the soul, one and
the same amongst the Egyptians, and the Syrians, and the tribes of Pontus.
For their souls call the God of the Jews their God. Do not, O barbarian
heretic, put Abraham before the world. Even if the Creator had been the God
of one family, He was yet not later than your god; even in Pontus was He
known before him. Take then your standard from Him who came first: from the
Certain (must be judged) the uncertain; from the Known the unknown. Never
shall God be hidden, never shall God be wanting. Always shall He be
understood, always be heard, nay even seen, in whatsoever way He shall
wish. God has for His witnesses this whole being of ours, and this universe
wherein we dwell. He is thus, because not unknown, proved to be both God
and the only One, although another still tries hard to make out his claim.

CHAP.XI.--THE EVIDENCE FOR GOD EXTERNAL TO HIM; BUT THE EXTERNAL CREATION
WHICH YIELDS THIS EVIDENCE IS REALLY NOT EXTRANEOUS, FOR ALL THINGS ARE
GOD'S. MARCION'S GOD, HAVING NOTHING TO SHOW FOR HIMSELF, NO GOD AT ALL.
MARCION'S SCHEME ABSURDLY DEFECTIVE, NOT FURNISHING EVIDENCE FOR HIS NEW
GOD'S EXISTENCE, WHICH SHOULD AT LEAST BE ABLE TO COMPETE WITH THE FULL
EVIDENCE OF THE CREATOR.

   And justly so, they say. For who is there that is less well known by
his own (inherent) qualities than by strange(12) ones? No one. Well, I keep
to this statement. How could anything be strange.(13) to God, to whom, if
He were personally existent, nothing would be strange? For this is the
attribute of God, that all things are His, and all things belong to Him; or
else this question would not so readily be heard from us: What has He to do
with things strange to Him?--a point which will be more fully noticed in
its proper place. It is now sufficient to observe, that no one is proved to
exist to whom nothing is proved to belong. For as the Creator is shown to
be God, God without any doubt, from the fact that all things are His, and
nothing is strange to Him; so the rival(14) god is seen to be no god, from
the circumstance that nothing is his, and all things are therefore strange
to him. Since, then, the universe belongs to the Creator, I see no room for
any other god. All things are full of their Author, and occupied by Him. If
in created beings there be any portion of space anywhere void of Deity, the
void will be of a false deity clearly.(1) By falsehood the truth is made
clear. Why cannot the vast crowd of false gods somewhere find room for
Marcion's god? This, therefore, I insist upon, from the character(2) of the
Creator, that God must have been known from the works of some world
peculiarly His own, both in its human constituents, and the rest of its
organic life;(3) when even the error of the world has presumed to call gods
those men whom it sometimes acknowledges, on the ground that in every such
case something is. seen which provides for the uses and advantages of
life.(4) Accordingly, this also was believed from the character of God to
be a divine function; namely, to teach or point out what is convenient and
needful in human concerns. So completely has the authority which has given
influence to a false divinity been borrowed from that source, whence it had
previously flowed forth to the true one. One stray vegetable s at least
Marcion's god ought to have produced as his own; so might he be preached up
as a new Triptolemus.(6) Or else state some reason which shall be worthy of
a God, why he, supposing him to exist, created nothing; because he must, on
supposition of his existence, have been a creator, on that very principle
on which it is clear to us thai our God is no otherwise existent, than as
having been the Creator of this universe of ours. For, once for all, the
rule(7) will hold good, that they cannot both acknowledge the Creator to be
God, and also prove him divine whom they wish to be equally believed in as
God, except they adjust him to the standard of Him whom they and all men
hold to be God; which is this, that whereas no one doubts the Creator to be
God on the express ground of His having made the universe, so, on the
selfsame ground, no one ought to believe that he also is God who has made
nothing--except, indeed, some good reason be forthcoming. And this must
needs be limited to one of two: he was either unwilling to create, or else
unable. There is no third reason.(8) Now, that he was unable, is a reason
unworthy of God. Whether to have been unwilling to be a worthy one, I want
to inquire. Tell me, Marcion, did your god wish himself to be recognised at
any time or not? With what other purpose did he come down from heaven, and
preach, and having suffered rise again from the dead, if it were not that
he might be acknowledged? And, doubtless, since he was acknowledged, he
willed it. For no circumstance could have happened to him, if he had been
unwilling. What indeed tended so greatly to the knowledge of himself, as
his appearing in the humiliation of the flesh,--a degradation all the lower
indeed if the flesh were only illusory?(9) For it was all the more shameful
if he, who brought on himself the Creator's curse by hanging on a tree,
only pretended the assumption of a bodily substance. A far nobler
foundation might he have laid for the knowledge of himself in some
evidences of a creation of his own, especially when he had to become known
in opposition to Him in whose territory(10) he had remained unknown by any
works from the beginning. For how happens it that the Creator, although
unaware, as the Marcionites aver, of any god being above Himself, and who
used to declare even with an oath that He existed alone, should have
guarded by such mighty works the knowledge of Himself, about which, on the
assumption of His being alone without a rival, He might have spared Himself
all care; while the Superior God, knowing all the while how well furnished
in power His inferior rival was, should have made no provision at all
towards getting Himself acknowledged? Whereas He ought to have produced
works more illustrious and exalted still, in order that He might, after the
Creator's standard, both be acknowledged as God from His works, and even by
nobler deeds show Himself to be more potent and more gracious than the
Creator.

CHAP. XII.--IMPOSSIBILITY OF ACKNOWLEDGING GOD WITHOUT THIS EXTERNAL
EVIDENCE(11) OF HIS EXISTENCE. MARCION'S REJECTION OF SUCH EVIDENCE FOR HIS
GOD SAVOURS OF IMPUDENCE AND MALIGNITY.

   But even if we were able to allow that he exists, we should yet be
bound to argue that he is without a cause.(11) For he who had nothing (to
show for himself as proof of his existence),would be without a cause, since
(such) proof(12) is the whole cause that there exists some person to whom
the proof belongs. Now, in as far as nothing ought to be without a cause,
that is, without a proof (because if it be without a cause, it is all one
as if it be not, not having the very proof which is the cause of a thing),
in so far shall I more worthily believe that God does not exist, than that
He exists without a cause. For he is without a cause who has not a cause by
reason of not having a proof. God, however, ought not to be without a
cause, that is to say, without a proof. Thus, as often as I show that He
exists without a cause, although (I allow(1) that) He exists, I do really
determine this, that He does not exist; because, if He had existed, He
could not have existed altogether without a cause.(2) So, too, even in
regard to faith itself, I say that he(3) seeks to obtain it(4) with out
cause from man, who is otherwise accustomed to believe in God from the idea
he gets of Him from the testimony of His works:(5) (without cause, I
repeat,) because he has provided no such proof as that whereby man has
acquired the knowledge of God. For although most persons believe in Him,
they do not believe at once by unaided reason,(6) without having some token
of Deity in works worthy of God. And so upon this ground of inactivity and
lack of works he(7) is guilty both of impudence and malignity: of
impudence, in aspiring after a belief which is not due to him, and for
which he has provided no foundation;(8) of malignity, in having brought
many persons under the charge of unbelief by furnishing to them no
groundwork for their faith.

CHAP.XIII.--THE MARCIONITES DEPRECIATE THE CREATION, WHICH, HOWEVER, IS A
WORTHY WITNESS OF GOD. THIS WORTHINESS ILLUSTRATED BY REFERENCES TO THE
HEATHEN PHILOSOPHERS, WHO WERE APT TO INVEST THE SEVERAL PARTS OF CREATION
WITH DIVINE ATTRIBUTES.

   While we are expelling from this rank (of Deity) a god who has no
evidence to show for himself which is so proper and God-worthy as the
testimony of the Creator, Marcion's most shameless followers with haughty
impertinence fall upon the Creator's works to destroy them. To be sure, say
they, the world is a grand work, worthy of a God. (90 Then is the Creator
not at all a God? By all means He is God.(10) Therefore(11) the world is
not unworthy of God, for God has made nothing unworthy of Himself; although
it was for man, and not for Himself, that He made the world, (and) although
every work is less than its maker. And yet, if to have been the author of
our creation, such as it is, be unworthy of God, how much more unworthy of
Him is it to have created absolutely nothing at all!--not even a production
which, although unworthy, might yet have encouraged the hope of some better
attempt. To say somewhat, then, concerning the alleged(12) unworthiness of
this world's fabric, to which among the Greeks also is assigned a name of
ornament and grace,(13) not of sordidness, those very professors of
wisdom,(14) from whose genius every heresy derives its spirit,(15) called
the said unworthy elements divine; as Thales did water, Heraclitus fire,
Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly bodies, Strato the sky and
earth, Zeno the air and ether, and Plato the stars, which he calls a fiery
kind of gods; whilst concerning the world, when they considered indeed its
magnitude, and strength, and power, and honour, and glory,--the abundance,
too, the regularity, and law of those individual elements which contribute
to the production, the nourishment, the ripening, and the reproduction of
all things,--the majority of the philosophers hesitated(16) to assign a
beginning and an end to the said world, lest its constituent elements,(17)
great as they undoubtedly are, should fail to be regarded as divine,(18)
which are objects of worshsip with the Persian magi, the Egyptian
hierophants, and the Indian gymnosophists. The very superstition of the
crowd, inspired by the common idolatry, when ashamed of the names and
fables of their ancient dead borne by their idols, has recourse to the
interpretation of natural objects, and so with much ingenuity cloaks its
own disgrace, figuratively reducing Jupiter to a heated substance, and Juno
to an aerial one (according to the literal sense of the Greek words);(19)
Vesta, in like manner, to fire, and the Muses to waters, and the Great
Mother(20) to the earth, mowed as to its crops, ploughed up with lusty
arms, and watered with baths.(1) Thus Osiris also, whenever he is buried,
and looked for to come to life again, and with joy recovered, is an emblem
of the regularity wherewith the fruits of the ground return, and the
elements recover life, and the year comes round; as also the lions of
Mithras(2) are philosophical sacraments of arid and scorched nature. It is,
indeed, enough for me that natural elements, foremost in site and state,
should have been more readily regarded as divine than as unworthy of God. I
will, however, come down to(3) humbler objects. A single floweret from the
hedgerow, I say not from the meadows; a single little shellfish from any
sea, I say not from the Red Sea; a single stray wing of a moorfowl, I say
nothing of the peacock,--will, I presume, prove to you that the Creator was
but a sorry(4) artificer!

CHAP. XIV.--ALL PORTIONS OF CREATION ATTEST THE EXCELLENCE OF THE CREATOR,
WHOM MARCION VILIFIES. HIS INCONSISTENCY HEREIN EXPOSED. MARCION'S OWN GOD
DID NOT HESITATE TO USE THE CREATOR'S WORKS IN INSTITUTING HIS OWN
RELIGION.

   Now, when you make merry with those minuter animals, which their
glorious Maker has purposely endued with a profusion. of instincts and
resources,(5)--thereby teaching us that greatness has its proofs in
lowliness, just as (according to the apostle)there is power even in
infirmity(6)--imitate, if you can, the cells of the bee, the hills of the
ant, the webs of the spider, and the threads of the silkworm; endure, too,
if you know how, those very creatures(7) which infest your couch and house,
the poisonous ejections of the blister-beetle,(8) the spikes of the fly,
and the gnat's Sheath and sting. What of the greater animals, when the
small ones so affect you with pleasure or pain, that you cannot even in
their case despise their Creator? Finally, take a circuit round your own
self; survey man within and without. Even this handiwork of our God will be
pleasing to you, inasmuch as your own lord, that better god, loved it so
well,(9) and for your sake was at the pains(10) of descending from the
third heaven to these poverty-stricken(11) elements, and for the same
reason was actually crucified in this sorry(12) apartment of the Creator.
Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the
Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he
anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them
the nourishment(13) of children; nor the bread by which he represents his
own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the "beggarly(14)
elements" of the Creator. You, however, are a disciple above his master,
and a servant above his lord; you have a higher reach of discernment than
his; you destroy what he requires. I wish to examine whether you are at
least honest in this, so as to have no longing for those things which you
destroy. You are an enemy to the sky, and yet you are glad to catch its
freshness in your houses. You disparage the earth, although the elemental
parent(15) of your own flesh, as if it were your undoubted enemy, and yet
you extract from it all its fatness(16) for your food. The sea, too, you
reprobate, but are continually using its produce, which you account the
more sacred diet.(17) If I should offer you a rose, you will not disdain
its Maker. You hypocrite, however much of abstinence you use to show
yourself a Marcionite, that is, a repudiator of your Maker (for if the
world displeased you, such abstinence ought to have been affected by you as
a martyrdom), you will have to associate yourself with(18) the Creator's
material production, into what element soever you shall be dissolved. How
hard is this obstinacy of yours! You vilify the things in which you both
live and die.

CHAP. XV.--THE LATENESS OF THE REVELATION OF MARCION'S GOD. THE QUESTION OF
THE PLACE OCCUPIED BY THE RIVAL DEITIES. INSTEAD OF TWO GODS, MARCION
REALLY (ALTHOUGH, AS IT WOULD SEEM, UNCONSCIOUSLY) HAD NINE GODS IN HIS
SYSTEM.

   After all, or, if you like,(19) before all, since you have said that he
has a creation(20) of his own, and his own world, and his own sky; we shall
see,(21) indeed, about that third heaven, when we come to discuss even your
own apostle.(1) Meanwhile, whatever is the (created) substance, it ought at
any rate to have made its appearance in company with its own god. But  now,
how happens it that the Lord has been revealed since the twelfth year of
Tiberius Caesar, while no creation of His at all has been discovered up to
the fifteenth of the Emperor Severus;(2) although, as being more excellent
than the paltry works(3) of the Creator, it should certainly have ceased to
conceal itself, when its lord and author no longer lies hid? I ask,
therefore,(4) if it was unable to manifest itself in this world, how did
its Lord appear in this world? If this world received its Lord, why was it
not able to receive the created substance, unless perchance it was greater
than its Lord? But now there arises a question about place, having
reference both to the world above and to the God thereof. For, behold, if
he(5) has his own world beneath him, above the Creator, he has certainly
fixed it in a position, the space of which was empty between his own feet
and the Creator's head. Therefore God both Himself occupied local space,
and caused the world to occupy local space; and this local space, too, will
be greater than God and the world together. For in no case is that which
contains not greater than that which is contained. And indeed we must look
well to it that no small patches(6) be left here and there vacant, in which
some third god also may be able with a world of his own to foist himself
in.(7) Now, begin to reckon up your gods. There will be local space for a
god, not only as being greater than God, but as being also unbegotten and
unmade, and therefore eternal, and equal to God, in which God has ever
been. Then, inasmuch as He too has fabricated(8) a world out of some
underlying material which is unbegotten, and unmade, and contemporaneous
with God, just as Marcion holds of the Creator, you reduce this likewise to
the dignity of that local space which has enclosed two gods, both God and
matter. For matter also is a god according to the rule of Deity, being (to
be sure) unbegotten, and unmade, and eternal. If, however, it was out of
nothing that he made his world, this also (our heretic) will be obliged to
predicate(9) of the Creator, to whom he subordinates(10) matter in the
substance of the world. But it will be only right that he(11) too should
have made his world out of matter, because the same process occurred to him
as God which lay before the Creator as equally God. And thus you may, if
you please, reckon up so far,(13) three gods as Marcion's,--the Maker,
local space, and matter. Furthermore,(13) he in like manner makes the
Creator a god in local space, which is itself to be appraised on a
precisely identical scale of dignity; and to Him as its lord he
subordinates matter, which is notwithstanding unbegotten, and unmade, and
by reason hereof eternal. With this matter he further associates evil, an
unbegotten principle with an unbegotten object, an unmade with an unmade,
and an eternal with an eternal; so here he makes a fourth God. Accordingly
you have three substances of Deity in the higher instances, and in the
lower ones four. When to these are added their Christs--the one which
appeared in the time of Tiberius, the other which is promised by the
Creator--Marcion suffers a manifest wrong from those persons who assume
that he holds two gods, whereas he implies(14) no less than nine.(15)
though he knows it not.

CHAP. XVI.--MARCION ASSUMES THE EXISTENCE OF TWO GODS FROM THE ANTITHESIS
BETWEEN THINGS VISIBLE AND THINGS INVISIBLE. THIS ANTITHETICAL PRINCIPLE IN
FACT CHARACTERISTIC OF THE WORKS OF THE CREATOR, THE ONE GOD--MAKER OF ALL
THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE.

   Since, then, that other world does not appear, nor its god either, the
only resource left (16) to them is to divide things into the two classes of
visible and invisible, with two gods for their authors, and so to claim(17)
the invisible for their own, (the supreme) God. But who, except an
heretical spirit, could ever bring his mind to believe that the invisible
part of creation belongs to him who had previously displayed no visible
thing, rather than to Him who, by His operation on the visible world,
produced a belief in the invisible also, since it is far more reasonable to
give one's assent after some samples (of a work) than after none? We shall
see to what author even (your favourite) apostle attributes(1) the
invisible creation, when we come to examine him. At present (we withhold
his testimony), for(2) we are for the most part engaged in preparing the
way, by means of common sense and fair arguments, for a belief in the
future support of the Scriptures also. We affirm, then, that this diversity
of things visible and invisible must on this ground be attributed to the
Creator, even because the whole of His work consists of diversities--of
things corporeal and incorporeal; of animate and inanimate; of vocal and
mute of moveable and stationary; of productive and sterile; of arid and
moist; of hot and cold. Man, too, is himself similarly tempered with
diversity, both in his body and in his sensation. Some of his members are
strong, others weak; some comely, others uncomely; some twofold, others
unique; some like, others unlike. In like manner there is diversity also in
his sensation: now joy, then anxiety; now love, then hatred; now anger,
then calmness. Since this is the case, inasmuch as the whole of this
creation of ours has been fashioned(3) with a reciprocal rivalry amongst
its several parts, the invisible ones are due to the visible, and not to be
ascribed to any other author than Him to whom their counterparts are
imputed, marking as they do diversity in the Creator Himself, who orders
what He forbade, and forbids what He ordered; who also strikes and heals.
Why do they take Him to be uniform in one class of things alone, as the
Creator of visible things, and only them; whereas He ought to be believed
to have created both the visible and the invisible, in just the same way as
life and death, or as evil things and peace?(4) And verily, if the
invisible creatures are greater than the visible, which are in their own
sphere great, so also is it fitting that the greater should be His to whom
the great belong; because neither the great, nor indeed the greater, can be
suitable property for one who seems to possess not even the smallest
things.

CHAP. XVII.--NOT ENOUGH, AS THE MARCIONITES PRETEND, THAT THE SUPREME GOD
SHOULD RESCUE MAN; HE MUST ALSO HAVE CREATED HIM.  THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
PROVED BY HIS CREATION, A PRIOR CONSIDERATION TO HIS CHARACTER.

   Pressed by these arguments, they exclaim: One work is sufficient for
our god; he has delivered man by his supreme and most excellent goodness,
which is preferable to (the creation of) all the locusts.(5) What superior
god is this, of whom it has not been possible to find any work so great as
the man of the lesser god! Now without doubt the first thing you have to do
is to prove that he exists, after the same manner that the existence of God
must ordinarily be proved--by his works; and only after that by his good
deeds. For the first question is, Whether he exists? and then, What is his
character? The former is to be tested(6) by his works, the other by the
beneficence of them. It does not simply follow that he exists, because he
is said to have wrought deliverance for man; but only after it shall have
been settled that he exists, will there be room for saying that he has
affected this liberation. And even this point also must have its own
evidence, because it may be quite possible both that he has existence, and
yet has not wrought the alleged deliverance. Now in that section of our
work which concerned the question of the unknown god, two points were made
clear enough--both that he had created nothing: and that he ought to have
been a creator, in order to be known by his works; because, if he had
existed, he ought to have been known, and that too from the beginning of
things; for it was not fit that God should have lain hid. It will be
necessary that I should revert to the very trunk of that question of the
unknown god, that I may strike off into some of its other branches also.
For it will be first of all proper to inquire, Why he, who afterwards
brought himself into notice, did so--so late, and not at the very first?
From creatures, with which as God he was indeed so closely connected (and
the closer this connection was,(7) the greater was his goodness), he ought
never to have been hidden. For it cannot be pretended that there was not
either any means of arriving at the knowledge of God, or a good reason for
it, when from the beginning man was in the world, for whom the deliverance
is now come; as was also that malevolence of the Creator, in opposition to
which the good God has wrought the deliverance. He was therefore either
ignorant of the good reason for and means of his own necessary
manifestation, or doubted them; or else was either unable or unwilling to
encounter them. All these alternatives are unworthy of God, especially the
supreme and best. This topic,(1) however, we shall afterwards(2) more fully
treat, with a condemnation of the tardy manifestation; we at present simply
point it out.

CHAP. XVIII.--NOTWITHSTANDING THEIR CONCEITS, THE GOD OF THE MARCIONITES
FAILS IN THE VOUCHERS BOTH OF CREATED EVIDENCE AND OF ADEQUATE REVELATION.

   Well, then,(3) he has now advanced into notice, just when he willed,
when he could, when the destined hour arrived. For perhaps he was hindered
hitherto by his leading star,(4) or some weird malignants, or Saturn in
quadrature,(5) or Mars at the trine.(6) The Marcionites are very strongly
addicted to astrology; nor do they blush to get their livelihood by help of
the very stars which were made by the Creator (whom they depreciate). We
must here also treat of the quality(7) of the (new) revelation; whether
Marcion's supreme god has become known in a way worthy of him, so as to
secure the proof of his existence: and in the way of truth, so that he may
be believed to be the very being who had been already proved to have been
revealed in a manner worthy of his character. For things which are worthy
of God will prove the existence of God. We maintain(8) that God must first
be known(9) from nature, and afterwards authenticated(10) by instruction:
from nature by His works; by instruction,(11) through His revealed
announcements.(12) Now, in a case where nature is excluded, no natural
means (of knowledge) are furnished. He ought, therefore, to have carefully
supplied(13) a revelation of himself, even by announcements, especially as
he had to be revealed in opposition to One who, after so many and so great
works, both of creation and revealed announcement, had with difficulty
succeeded in satisfying(14) men's faith. In what manner, therefore, has the
revelation been made? If by man's conjectural guesses, do not say that God
can possibly become known in any other way than by Himself, and appeal not
only to the standard of the Creator, but to the conditions both of God's
greatness and man's littleness; so that man seem not by any possibility to
be greater than God, by having somehow drawn Him out into public
recognition, when He was Himself unwilling to become known by His own
energies, although man's littleness has been able, according to experiments
all over the world, more easily to fashion for itself gods, than to follow
the true God whom men now understand by nature. As for the rest,(15) if man
shall be thus able to devise a god,--as Romulus did Consus, and Tatius
Cloacina, and Hostilius Fear, and Metellus Alburnus, and a certain
authority(16) some time since Antinous,--the same accomplishment may be
allowed to others. As for us, we have found our pilot in Marcion, although
not a king nor an emperor.

CHAP.XIX.--JESUS CHRIST, THE REVEALER OF THE CREATOR, COULD NOT BE THE SAME
AS MARCION'S GOD, WHO WAS ONLY MADE KNOWN BY THE HERETIC SOME CXV. YEARS
AFTER CHRIST, AND THAT, TOO, ON A PRINCIPLE UTTERLY UNSUITED TO THE
TEACHING OF JESUS CHRIST, I.E., THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN THE LAW AND THE
GOSPELS.

   Well, but our god, say the Marcionites, although he did not manifest
himself from the beginning and by means of the creation, has yet revealed
himself in Christ Jesus. A book will be devoted(17) to Christ, treating of
His entire state; for it is desirable that these subject-matters should be
distinguished one from another, in order that they may receive a fuller and
more methodical treatment. Meanwhile it will be sufficient if, at this
stage of the question, I show--and that but briefly--that Christ Jesus is
the revealer(18) of none other god but the Creator. In the fifteenth year
of Tiberius,(19) Christ Jesus vouchsafed to come down from heaven, as the
spirit of saving health.(20) I cared not to inquire, indeed, in what
particular year of the elder Antoninus. He who had so gracious a purpose
did rather, like a pestilential sirocco,(21) exhale this health or
salvation, which Marcion teaches from his Pontus. Of this teacher there is
no doubt that he is a heretic of the Antonine period, impious under the
pious. Now, from Tiberius to Antoninus Pius, there are about 115 years and
6 1/2 months. Just such an interval do they place between Christ and
Marcion. Inasmuch, then, as Marcion, as we have shown, first introduced
this god to notice in the time of Antoninus, the matter becomes at once
clear, if you are a shrewd observer. The dates already decide the case,
that he who came to light for the first time(1) in the reign of Antoninus,
did not appear in that of Tiberius; in other words, that the God of the
Antonine period was not the God of the Tiberian; and consequently, that he
whom Marcion has plainly preached for the first time, was not revealed by
Christ (who announced His revelation as early as the reign of Tiberius).
Now, to prove clearly what remains of the argument, I shall draw materials
from my very adversaries. Marcion's special and principal work is the
separation of the law and the gospel; and his disciples will not deny that
in this point they have their very best pretext for initiating and
confirming themselves in his heresy. These are Marcion's Antitheses, or
contradictory propositions, which aim at committing the gospel to a
variance with the law, in order that from the diversity of the two
documents which contain them,(2) they may contend for a diversity of gods
also. Since, therefore, it is this very opposition between the law and the
gospel which has suggested that the God of the gospel is different from the
God of the law, it is clear that, before the said separation, that god
could not have been known who became known(3) from the argument of the
separation itself. He therefore could not have been revealed by Christ, who
came before the separation, but must have been devised by Marcion, the
author of the breach of peace between the gospel and the law. Now this
peace, which had remained unhurt and unshaken from Christ's appearance to
the time of Marcion's audacious doctrine, was no doubt maintained by that
way of thinking, which firmly held that the God of both law and gospel was
none other than the Creator, against whom after so long a time a separation
has been introduced by the heretic of Pontus.

CHAP.XX.--MARCION, JUSTIFYING HIS ANTITHESIS BETWEEN THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL
BY THE CONTENTION OF ST. PAUL WITH ST. PETER, SHOWN TO HAVE MISTAKEN ST.
PAUL'S POSITION AND ARGUMENT. MARCION'S DOCTRINE CONFUTED OUT OF ST. PAUL'S
TEACHING, WHICH AGREES WHOLLY WITH THE CREATOR'S DECREES.

   This most patent conclusion requires to be defended by us against the
clamours of the opposite side. For they allege that Marcion did not so much
innovate on the rule (of faith) by his separation of the law and the
gospel, as restore it after it had been previously adulterated. O
Christ,(4) most enduring Lord, who didst bear so many years with this
interference with Thy revelation, until Marcion forsooth came to Thy
rescue! Now they adduce the case of Peter himself, and the others, who were
pillars of the apostolate, as having been blamed by Paul for not walking
uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel--that very Paul indeed,
who, being yet in the mere rudiments of grace, and trembling, in short,
lest he should have run or were still running in vain, then for the first
time held intercourse with those who were apostles before himself.
Therefore because, in the eagerness of his zeal against Judaism as a
neophyte, he thought that there was something to be blamed in their
conduct--even the promiscuousness of their conversation(5)--but afterwards
was himself to become in his practice all things to all men, that he might
gain all,--to the Jews, as a Jew, and to them that were under the law, as
under the law,--you would have his censure, which was merely directed
against conduct destined to become acceptable even to their accuser,
suspected of prevarication against God on a point of public doctrine.(6)
Touching their public doctrine, however, they had, as we have already said,
joined hands in perfect concord, and had agreed also in the division of
their labour in their fellowship of the gospel, as they had indeed in all
other respects:(7) "Whether it were I or they, so we preach."(8) When,
again, he mentioned "certain false brethren as having crept in unawares,"
who wished to remove the Galatians into another gospel,(9) he himself shows
that that adulteration of the gospel was not meant to transfer them to the
faith of another god and christ, but rather to perpetuate the teaching of
the law; because he blames them for maintaining circumcision, and observing
times, and days, and months, and years, according to those Jewish
ceremonies which they ought to have known were now abrogated, according to
the new dispensation purposed by the Creator Himself, who of old foretold
this very thing by His prophets. Thus He says by Isaiah: Old things have
passed away. "Behold, I will do a new thing."(10) And in another passage:
"I will make a new covenant, not according to the covenant that I made with
their fathers, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt."(1) In like
manner by Jeremiah: Make to yourselves a new covenant, "circumcise
yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart."(2) It
is this circumcision, therefore, and this renewal, which the apostle
insisted on, when he forbade those ancient ceremonies concerning which
their very founder announced that they were one day to cease; thus by
Hosea: "I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new
moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.''(3) So likewise by
Isaiah: "The new moons, and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot
away with; your holy days, and fasts, and feast-days, my soul hateth."(4)
Now, if even the Creator had so long before discarded all these things, and
the apostle was now proclaiming them to be worthy of renunciation, the very
agreement of the apostle's meaning with the decrees of the Creator proves
that none other God was preached by the apostle than He whose purposes he
now wished to have recognised, branding as false both apostles and
brethren, for the express reason that they were pushing back the gospel of
Christ the Creator from the new condition which the Creator had foretold,
to the old one which He had discarded.

CHAP. XXI.--ST. PAUL PREACHED NO NEW GOD, WHEN HE ANNOUNCED THE REPEAL OF
SOME OE GOD'S ANCIENT ORDINANCES. NEVER ANY HESITATION ABOUT BELIEF IN THE
CREATOR, AS THE GOD WHOM CHRIST REVEALED, UNTIL MARCION'S HERESY.

   Now if it was with the view of preaching a new god that he was eager to
abrogate the law of the old God, how is it that he prescribes no rule
about(5) the new god, but solely about the old law, if it be not because
faith in the Creator(6) was still to continue, and His law alone was to
come to an end?(7)--just as the Psalmist had declared: "Let us break their
bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. Why do the heathen rage,
and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth stand up, and
the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against His
Anointed."(8) And, indeed, if another god were preached by Paul, there
could be no doubt about the law, whether it were to be kept or not, because
of course it would not belong to the new lord, the enemy(9) of the law. The
very newness and difference of the god would take away not only all
question about the old and alien law, but even all mention of it. But the
whole question, as it then stood, was this, that although the God of the
law was the same as was preached in Christ, yet there was a
disparagement(10) of His law. Permanent still, therefore, stood faith in
the Creator and in His Christ; manner of life and discipline alone
fluctuated.(11) Some disputed about eating idol sacrifices, others about
the veiled dress of women, others again about marriage and divorce, and
some even about the hope of the resurrection; but about God no one
disputed. Now, if this question also had entered into dispute, surely it
would be found in the apostle, and that too as a great and vital point. No
doubt, after the time of the apostles, the truth respecting the belief of
God suffered corruption, but it is equally certain that during the life of
the apostles their teaching on this great article did not suffer at all; so
that no other teaching will have the fight of being received as apostolic
than that which is at the present day proclaimed in the churches of
apostolic foundation. You will, however, find no church of apostolic
origin(12) but such as reposes its Christian faith in the Creator.(13) But
if the churches shall prove to have been corrupt from the beginning, where
shall the pure ones be found? Will it be amongst the adversaries of the
Creator? Show us, then, one of your churches, tracing its descent from an
apostle, and you will have gained the day.(14) Forasmuch then as it is on
all accounts evident that there was from Christ down to Marcion's time no
other God in the rule of sacred truth's than the Creator, the proof of our
argument is sufficiently established, in which we have shown that the god
of our heretic first became known by his separation of the gospel and the
law. Our previous position(16) is accordingly made good, that no god is to
be believed whom any man has devised out of his own conceits; except indeed
the man be a prophet,(17) and then his own conceits would not be concerned
in the matter. If Marcion, however, shall be able to lay claim to this
inspired character, it will be necessary for it to be shown. There must be
no doubt or paltering.(18) For all heresy is thrust out by this wedge of
the truth, that Christ is proved to be the revealer of no God else but the
Creator.(19)

CHAP. XXII.--GOD'S ATTRIBUTE OF GOODNESS CONSIDERED AS NATURAL; THE GOD OF
MARCION FOUND WANTING HEREIN. IT CAME NOT TO MAN'S RESCUE WHEN FIRST
WANTED.

   But how shall (this) Antichrist be fully overthrown unless we relax our
defence by mere prescription,(1) and give ourselves scope for rebutting all
his other attacks? Let us therefore next take the very person of God
Himself, or rather His shadow or phantom,(2) as we have it in Christ, and
let Him be examined by that condition which makes Him superior to the
Creator. And undoubtedly there will come to hand unmistakeable rules for
examining God's goodness. My first point, however, iS to discover and
apprehend the attribute, and then to draw it out into rules. Now, when I
survey the subject in its aspects of time, I nowhere descry it(3) from the
beginning of material existences, or at the commencement of those causes,
with which it ought to have been found, proceeding thence to do(4) whatever
had to be done. For there was death already, and Sin the sting of death,
and that malignity too of the Creator, against which the goodness of the
other god should have been ready to bring relief; falling in with this as
the primary rule of the divine goodness (if it were to prove itself a
natural agency), at once coming as a succour when the cause for it began.
For in God all things should be natural and inbred, just like His own
condition indeed, in order that they may be eternal, and so not be
accounted casual(5) and extraneous, and thereby temporary and wanting in
eternity. In God, therefore, goodness is  required to be both perpetual and
unbroken,(6) such as, being stored up and kept ready in the treasures of
His natural properties, might precede its own causes and material
developments; and if thus preceding, might underlie(7) every first material
cause, instead of looking at it from a distance,(8) and standing aloof from
it.(9) In short, here too I must inquire, Why his(10) goodness did not
operate from the beginning? no less pointedly than when we inquired
concerning himself, Why he was not revealed from the very first? Why, then,
did it not? since he had to be revealed by his goodness if he had any
existence. That God should at all fail in power must not be thought, much
less that He should not discharge all His natural functions; for if these
were restrained from running their course, they would cease to be natural.
Moreover, the .nature of God Him self knows nothing of inactivity. Hence
(His goodness) is reckoned as having a beginning,(11) if it acts. It will
thus be evident that He had no unwillingness to exercise His goodness at
any time on account of His nature. Indeed, it is impossible that He should
be unwilling because of His nature, since that so directs itself that it
would no longer exist if it ceased to act. In Marcion's god, however,
goodness ceased from operation at some time or other. A goodness,
therefore, which could thus at any time have ceased its action was not
natural, because with natural properties such cessation is incompatible.
And if it shall not prove to be natural, it must no longer be believed to
be eternal nor competent to Deity; because it cannot be eternal so long as,
failing to be natural, it neither provides from the past nor guarantees for
the future any means of perpetuating itself. Now as a fact it existed not
from the beginning, and, doubtless, will not endure to the end. For it is
possible for it to fail in existence some future(12)  time or other, as it
has failed in some past(13) period. Forasmuch, then, as the goodness of
Marcion's god failed in the beginning (for he did not from the first
deliver man), this failure must have been the effect of will rather than of
infirmity. Now a wilful suppression of goodness will be found to have a
malignant end in view. For what malignity is so great as to be unwilling to
do good when one can, or to thwart(14) what is useful, or to permit injury?
The whole description, therefore, of Marcion's Creator will have to be
transferred(15) to his new god, who helped on the ruthless(16) proceedings
of the former by the retardation of his own goodness. For whosoever has it
in his power to prevent the happening of a thing, is accounted responsible
for it if it should occur. Man is condemned to death for tasting the fruit
of one poor tree,(17) and thence proceed sins with their penalties; and now
all are perishing who yet never saw a single sod of Paradise. And all this
your better god either is ignorant of, or else brooks. Is it that(18) he
might on this account be deemed the better, and the Creator be regarded as
all that the worse? Even if this were his purpose he would be malicious
enough, for both wishing to aggravate his rival's obloquy by permitting His
(evil) works to be done, and by keeping the world harrassed by the wrong.
What would you think of a physician who should encourage a disease by
withholding the remedy, and prolong the danger by delaying his
prescription, in order that his cure might be more costly and more
renowned? Such must be the sentence to be pronounced against Marcion's god:
tolerant of evil, encouraging wrong, wheedling about his grace,
prevaricating in his goodness, which he did not exhibit simply on its own
account, but which he must mean to exhibit purely, if he is good by nature
and not by acquisition,(1) if he is supremely good in attribute(2) and not
by discipline, if he is God from eternity and not from Tiberius, nay (to
speak more truly), from Cerdon only and Marcion. As the case now stands,(3)
however,  such a god as we are considering would have   been more fit for
Tiberius, that the goodness  of the Divine Being might be inaugurated in
the world under his imperial sway!

CHAP. XXIII.--GOD'S ATTRIBUTE OF GOODNESS CONSIDERED AS RATIONAL. MARCION'S
GOD DEFECTIVE HERE ALSO; HIS GOODNESS IRRATIONAL AND MISAPPLIED.

   Here is another rule for him. All the properties of God ought to be as
rational as they are natural. I require reason in His goodness, because
nothing else can properly be accounted good than that which is rationally
good; much less can goodness itself be detected in any irrationality. More
easily will an evil thing which has something rational belonging to it be
accounted good, than that a good thing bereft of all reasonable quality
should escape being regarded as evil. Now I deny that the goodness of
Marcion's god is rational, on this account first, because it proceeded to
the salvation of a human creature which was alien to him. I am aware of the
plea which they will adduce, that that is rather (4) a primary and perfect
goodness which is shed   voluntarily and freely upon strangers without any
obligation of friendship,(5) on the principle that we are bidden to love
even our enemies, such as are also on that very account strangers to us.
Now, inasmuch as from the first he had no regard for man, a stranger to him
from the first, he settled beforehand, by this neglect of his, that he had
nothing to do with an alien creature. Besides, the rule of loving a
stranger or enemy is preceded by the precept of your loving your neighbour
as yourself; and this precept, although coming from the Creator's law, even
you ought to receive, because, so far from being abrogated by Christ, it
has rather been confirmed by Him. For you are bidden to love your enemy and
the stranger, in order that you may  love your neighbour the better. The
requirement of the undue is an augmentation of the due benevolence. But the
due precedes the undue, as the principal quality, and more worthy of the
other, for its attendant and companion.(6) Since, therefore, the first step
in the reasonableness of the divine goodness is that it displays itself on
its proper object(7) in righteousness, and only at its second stage on an
alien object by a redundant righteousness over and above that of scribes
and Pharisees, how comes it to pass that the second is attributed to him
who fails in the first, not having man for his proper object, and who makes
his goodness on this very account defective? Moreover, how could a
defective benevolence, which had no proper object whereon to expend itself,
overflow(8) on an alien one? Clear up the first step, and then vindicate
the next. Nothing can be claimed as rational without order, much less can
reason itself(9) dispense with order in any one. Suppose now the divine
goodness begin at the second stage of its rational operation, that is to
say, on the stranger, this second stage will not be consistent in
rationality if it be impaired in any way else.(10) For only then will even
the second stage of goodness, that which is displayed towards the stranger,
be accounted rational, when it operates without wrong to him who has the
first claim.(11) It is righteousness (12) which before everything else
makes all goodness rational. It will thus be rational in its principal
stage, when manifested on its proper object, if it be righteous. And thus,
in like manner, it will be able to appear rational, when displayed towards
the stranger, if it be not unrighteous. But what sort of goodness is that
which is manifested in wrong, and that in behalf of an alien creature? For
peradventure a benevolence, even when operating injuriously, might be
deemed to some extent rational, if exerted for one of our own house and
home.(1) By what rule, however, can an unjust benevolence, displayed on
behalf of a stranger, to whom not even an honest one is legitimately due,
be defended as a rational one? For what is more unrighteous, more unjust,
more dishonest, than so to benefit an alien slave as to take him away from
his master, claim him as the property of another, and suborn him against
his master's life; and all this, to make the matter more iniquitous still
whilst he is yet living in his master's house and on his master's garner,
and still trembling beneath his stripes? Such a deliverer,(2) I had almost
said(3) kidnapper,(4) would even meet with condemnation in the world. Now,
no other than this is the character of Marcion's god, swooping upon an
alien world, snatching away man from his God,(5) the son from his father,
the pupil from his tutor, the servant from his master--to make him impious
to his God, undutiful to his father, ungrateful to his tutor, worthless to
his master. If, now, the rational benevolence makes man such, what sort of
being prithee(6) would the irrational make of him? None I should think more
shameless than him who is baptized to his(7) god in water which belongs to
another, who stretches out his hands(8) to his god towards a heaven which
is another's, who kneels to his god on ground which is another's, offers
his thanksgivings to his god over bread which belongs to another,(9) and
distributes(10) by way of alms and charity, for the sake of his god, gifts
which belong to another God. Who, then, is that so good a god of theirs,
that man through him becomes evil; so propitious, too, as to incense
against man that other God who is, indeed, his own proper Lord?

CHAP. XXIV.--THE GOODNESS OF MARCION'S GOD ONLY IMPERFECTLY MANIFESTED; IT
SAVES BUT FEW, AND THE SOULS MERELY OF THESE.  MARCION'S CONTEMPT OF THE
BODY ABSURD.

   But as God is eternal and rational, so, I think, He is perfect in all
things. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect."(11) Prove, then, that the goodness of your god also is a perfect
one. That it is indeed imperfect has been already sufficiently shown, since
it is found to be  neither natural nor rational. The same conclusion,
however, shall now be made clear(12) by another method; it is not
simply(13) imperfect, but actually(14) feeble, weak, and exhausted, failing
to embrace the full number(15) of its material objects, and not manifesting
itself in them all. For all are not put into a state of salvation(16) by
it; but the Creator's subjects, both Jew and Christian, are all
excepted.(17) Now, when the greater part thus perish, how can that goodness
be defended as a perfect one which is inoperative in most cases, is
somewhat only in few, naught in many, succumbs to perdition, and is a
partner with destruction?(18) And if so many shall miss salvation, it will
not be with goodness, but with malignity, that the greater perfection will
lie. For as it is the operation of goodness which brings salvation, so is
it malevolence which thwarts it.(19) Since, however, this goodness) saves
but few, and so rather leans to the alternative of not saving, it will show
itself to greater perfection by not interposing help than by helping. Now,
you will not be able to attribute goodness (to your god) in reference to
the Creator, (if accompanied with) failure towards all. For whomsoever you
call in to judge the question, it is as a dispenser of goodness, if so be
such a title can be made out,(20) and not as a squanderer thereof, as you
claim your god to be, that you must submit the divine character for
determination. So long, then, as you prefer your god to the Creator on the
simple ground of his goodness, and since he professes to have this
attribute as solely and wholly his own, he ought not to have been wanting
in it to any one. However, I do not now wish to prove that Marcion's god is
imperfect in goodness because of the perdition of the  greater number. I am
content to illustrate this imperfection by the fact that even those whom he
saves are found to possess but an imperfect salvation--that is, they are
saved only so far as the soul is concerned,(1) but lost in their body,
which, according to him, does not rise again. Now, whence comes this
halving of salvation, if not from a failure of goodness? What could have
been a better proof of a perfect goodness, than the recovery of the whole
man to salvation? Totally damned by the Creator, he should have been
totally restored by the most merciful god. I rather think that by Marcion's
rule the body is baptized, is deprived of marriage,(2) is cruelly tortured
in confession. But although sins are attributed to the body, yet they are
preceded by the guilty concupiscence of the soul; nay, the first motion of
sin must be ascribed to the soul, to which the flesh acts in the capacity
of a servant. By and by, when freed from  the soul, the flesh sins no
more.(3) So that in this matter goodness is unjust, and likewise imperfect,
in that it leaves to destruction the more harmless substance, which sins
rather by compliance than in will. Now, although Christ put not on the
verity of the flesh, as your heresy is pleased to assume, He still
vouchsafed to take upon Him the semblance thereof. Surely, therefore, some
regard was due to it from Him, because of this His reigned assumption of
it. Besides, what else is man than flesh, since no doubt it was the
corporeal rather than the spiritual(4) element from which the Author of
man's nature gave him his designation?(5) "And the LORD God made man of the
dust of the ground," not of spiritual essence; this afterwards came from
the divine afflatus: "and man became a living soul." What, then, is man?
Made, no doubt of it, of the dust; and God placed him in paradise, because
He moulded him, not breathed him, into being--a fabric of flesh, not of
spirit. Now, this being the case, with what face will you contend for the
perfect character of that goodness which did not fail in some one
particular only of man's deliverance, but in its general capacity? If that
is a plenary grace and a substantial mercy which brings salvation to the
soul alone, this were the better life which we now enjoy whole and entire;
whereas to rise again but in part will be a chastisement, not a liberation.
The proof of the perfect goodness is, that man, after his rescue, should be
delivered from the domicile and power of the malignant deity unto the
protection of the most good and merciful God. Poor dupe of Marcion,
fever(6) is hard upon you; and your painful flesh produces a crop of all
sorts of briers and thorns. Nor is it only to the Creator's thunderbolts
that you lie exposed, or to wars, and pestilences, and His other heavier
strokes, but even to His creeping insects. In what respect do you suppose
yourself liberated from His kingdom when His flies are still creeping upon
your face? If your deliverance lies in the future, why not also in the
present, that it may be perfectly wrought? Far different is our condition
in the sight of Him who is the Author, the Judge, the injured(7) Head of
our race! You display Him as a merely good God; but you are unable to prove
that He is perfectly good, because you are not by Him perfectly delivered.

CHAP. XXV.--GOD IS NOT A BEING OF SIMPLE GOODNESS; OTHER ATTRIBUTES BELONG
TO HIM.  MARCION SHOWS INCONSISTENCY IN THE PORTRAITURE OF HIS SIMPLY GOOD
AND EMOTIONLESS GOD.

   As touching this question of goodness, we have in these outlines of our
argument shown it to be in no way compatible with Deity,--as being neither
natural,(8) nor rational, nor perfect, but wrong,(9) and unjust, and
unworthy of the very name of goodness,--because, as far as the congruity of
the divine character is concerned, it cannot indeed be fitting that that
Being should be regarded as God who is alleged to have such a goodness, and
that not in a modified way, but simply and solely. For it is, furthermore,
at this point quite open to discussion, whether God ought to be regarded
as a Being of simple goodness, to the exclusion of all those other
attributes,(10) sensations, and affections, which the Marcionites indeed
transfer from their god to the Creator, and which we acknowledge to be
worthy characteristics of the Creator too, but only because we consider Him
to be God. Well, then, on this ground we shall deny him to be God in whom
all things are not to be found which befit the Divine Being. If (Marcion)
chose(11) to take any one of the school of Epicurus, and entitle him God in
the name of Christ, on the ground that what is happy and incorruptible can
bring no trouble either on itself or anything else (for Marcion, while
poring over(1) this opinion of the divine indifference, has removed from
him all the severity and energy of the judicial(2) character), it was his
duty to have developed his conceptions into some imperturbable and listless
god (and then what could he have had in common with Christ, who occasioned
trouble both to the Jews by what He taught, and to Himself by what He
felt?), or else to have admitted that he was possessed of the same emotions
as others(3) (and in such case what would he have had to do with Epicurus,
who was no friend(4) to either him or Christians?). For that a being who in
ages past(5) was in a quiescent state, not caring to communicate any
knowledge of himself by any work all the while, should come after so long a
time to entertain a concern for man's salvation, of course by his own
will,--did he not by this very fact become susceptible of the impulse(6) of
a new volition, so as palpably to be open to all other emotions?  But what
volition is unaccompanied with the spur of desire?(7) Who wishes for what
he desires not? Moreover, care will be another companion of the will. For
who will wish for any object and desire to have it, without also caring to
obtain it? When, therefore, (Marcion's god) felt both a will and a desire
for man's salvation, he certainly occasioned some concern and trouble both
to himself and others. This Marcion's theory suggests, though Epicurus
demurs. For he(8) raised up an adversary against himself in that very thing
against which his will and desire, and care were directed,--whether it were
sin or death,--and more especially in their Tyrant and Lord, the Creator of
man. Again,(9) nothing will ever run its course without hostile
rivalry,(10) which shall not (itself) be without a hostile aspect. In
fact,(11) when willing, desiring, and caring to deliver man, (Marcion's
god) already in the very act encounters a rival, both in Him from whom He
effects the deliverance (for of course(12) he means the liberation to be an
opposition to Him), and also in those things from which the deliverance is
wrought (the intended liberation being to the advantage of some other
things). For it must needs be, that upon rivalry its own ancillary
passions(13) will be in attendance, against whatever objects its emulation
is directed: anger, discord, hatred, disdain, indignation, spleen,
loathing, displeasure. Now, since all these emotions are present to
rivalry; since, moreover, the rivalry which arises in liberating man
excites them; and since, again, this deliverance of man is an operation of
goodness, it follows that this goodness avails nothing without its
endowments,(14) that is to say, without those sensations and affections
whereby it carries out its purpose(15) against the Creator; so that it
cannot even in this be ruled(16) to be irrational, as if it were wanting in
proper sensations and affections. These points we shall have to insist
on(17) much more fully, when we come to plead the  cause of the Creator,
where they will also incur our condemnation.

CHAP. XXVI.--IN THE ATTRIBUTE OF JUSTICE, MARCION'S GOD IS HOPELESSLY WEAK
AND UNGODLIKE.  HE DISLIKES EVIL, BUT DOES NOT PUNISH ITS PERPETRATION.

   But it is here sufficient that the extreme perversity of their god is
proved from the mere exposition of his lonely goodness, in which they
refuse to ascribe to him such emotions of mind as they censure in the
Creator. Now, if he is susceptible of no feeling of rivalry, or anger, or
damage, or injury, as one who refrains from exercising judicial power, I
cannot tell how any system of discipline--and that, too, a plenary one--can
be consistent in him. For how is it possible that he should issue commands,
if he does not mean to execute them; or forbid sins, if he intends not to
punish them, but rather to decline the functions of the judge, as being a
stranger to all notions of severity and judicial chastisement? For why does
he forbid the commission of that which he punishes not when perpetrated? It
would have been far more right, if he had not forbidden what he meant not
to punish, than that he should punish what he had not forbidden. Nay, it
was his duty even to have permitted what he was about to prohibit in so
unreasonable a way, as to annex no penalty to the offence.(18) For even now
that is tacitly permitted which is forbidden without any infliction of
vengeance. Besides, he only forbids the commission of that which he does
not like to have done. Most listless, therefore, is he, since he takes no
offence at the doing of what he dislikes to be done, although displeasure
ought to be the companion of his violated will. Now, if he is offended, he
ought to be angry; if angry, he ought to inflict punishment. For such
infliction is the just fruit of anger, and anger is the debt of
displeasure, and displeasure (as I have said) is the companion of a
violated will. However, he inflicts no punishment; therefore he takes no
offence.

   He takes no offence, therefore his will is not wronged, although that
is done which he was unwilling to have done; and the transgression is now
committed with the acquiescence of(1) his will, because whatever offends
not the will is not committed against the will. Now, if this is to be the
principle of the divine virtue or goodness, to be unwilling indeed that a
thing be done and to prohibit it, and yet not be moved by its commission,
we then allege that he has been moved already when he declared his
unwillingness; and that it is vain for him not to be moved by the
accomplishment of a thing after being moved at the possibility thereof,
when he willed it not to be done. For he prohibited it by his not willing
it. Did he not therefore do a judicial act, when he declared his
unwillingness, and consequent prohibition of it? For he judged that it
ought not to be done, and he deliberately declared(2) that it should be
forbidden. Consequently by this time even he performs the part of a judge.
If it is unbecoming for God to discharge a judicial function, or at least
only so far becoming that He may merely declare His unwillingness, and
pronounce His prohibition, then He may not even punish for an offence when
it is committed. Now, nothing is so unworthy of the Divine Being as not to
execute retribution on what He has disliked and forbidden. First, He owes
the infliction of chastisement to whatever sentence or law He promulges,
for the vindication of His authority and the maintenance of submission to
it; secondly, because hostile opposition is inevitable to what He has
disliked to be done, and by that dislike forbidden. Moreover, it would be a
more unworthy course for God to spare the evil-doer than to punish him,
especially in the most good and holy God, who is not otherwise fully good
than as the enemy of evil, and that to such a degree as to display His love
of good by the hatred of evil, and to fulfil His defence of the former by
the extirpation of the latter.

CHAP. XXVII.--DANGEROUS EFFECTS TO RELIGION AND MORALITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF
SO WEAK A GOD.

   Again, he plainly judges evil by not willing it, and condemns it by
prohibiting it; while, on the other hand, he acquits it by not avenging it,
and lets it go free by not punishing it. What a prevaricator of truth is
such a god! What a dissembler with his own decision! Afraid to condemn what
he really condemns, afraid to hate what he does not love, permitting that
to be done which he does not allow, choosing to indicate what he dislikes
rather than deeply examine it! This will turn out an imaginary goodness, a
phantom of discipline, perfunctory in duty, careless in sin. Listen, ye
sinners; and ye who have not yet come to this, hear, that you may attain to
such a pass! A better god has been discovered, who never takes offence, is
never angry, never inflicts punishment, who has prepared no fire in hell,
no gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness! He is purely and simply good.
He indeed forbids all delinquency, but only in word. He is in you, if you
are willing to pay him homage,(3) for the sake of appearances, that you may
seem to honour God; for your fear he does not want. And so satisfied are
the Marcionites with such pretences, that they have no fear of their god at
all. They say it is only a bad man who will be feared, a good man will be
loved. Foolish man, do you say that he whom you call Lord ought not to be
feared, whilst the very title you give him indicates a power which must
itself be feared? But how are you going to love, without some fear that you
do not love? Surely (such a god) is neither your Father, towards whom your
love for duty's sake should be consistent with fear because of His power;
nor your proper(4) Lord, whom you should love for His humanity and fear as
your teacher.(5) Kidnappers(6) indeed are loved after this fashion, but
they are not feared. For power will not be feared, except it be just and
regular, although it may possibly be loved even when corrupt: for it is by
allurement that it stands, not by authority; by flattery, not by proper
influence. And what can be more direct flattery than not to punish sins?
Come, then, if you do not fear God as being good, why do you not boil over
into every kind of lust, and so realize that which is, I believe, the main
enjoyment of life to all who fear not God? Why do you not frequent the
customary pleasures of the maddening circus, the bloodthirsty arena, and
the lascivious theatre?(1) Why in persecutions also do you not, when the
censer is presented, at once redeem your life by the denial of your faith?
God forbid, you say with redoubted(2) emphasis. So you do fear sin, and by
your fear prove that He is an object of fear Who forbids the sin. This is
quite a different matter from that obsequious homage you pay to the god
whom you do not fear, which is identical in perversity indeed to is own
conduct, in prohibiting a thing without annexing the sanction of
punishment. Still more vainly do they act, who when asked, What is to
become of every sinner in that great day? reply, that he is to be cast away
out of sight. Is not even this a question of judicial determination? He is
adjudged to deserve rejection, and that by a sentence of condemnation;
unless the sinner is cast away forsooth for his salvation, that even a
leniency like this may fall in consistently with the character of your most
good and excellent god! And what will it be to be cast away, but to lose
that which a man was in the way of obtaining, were it not for his
rejection--that is, his salvation? Therefore his being cast away will
involve the forfeiture of salvation; and this sentence cannot possibly be
passed upon him, except by an angry and offended authority, who is also the
punisher of sin--that is, by a judge.

CHAP. XXVIII.--THIS PERVERSE DOCTRINE DEPRIVES BAPTISM OF ALL ITS GRACE. IF
MARCION BE RIGHT, THE SACRAMENT WOULD CONFER NO REMISSION OF SINS, NO
REGENERATION, NO GIFT OF THE SPIRIT.

   And what will happen to him after he is cast away? He will, they say,
be thrown into the Creator's fire. Then has no remedial provision been made
(by their god) for the purpose of banishing those that sin against him,
without resorting to the cruel measure of delivering them over to the
Creator? And what will the Creator then do? I suppose He will prepare for
them a hell doubly charged with brimstone,(3) as for blasphemers against
Himself; except indeed their god in his zeal, as perhaps might happen,
should show clemency to his rival's revolted subjects. Oh, what a god is
this! everywhere perverse; nowhere rational; in all cases vain; and
therefore a nonentity!(4)--in whose state, and condition, and nature, and
every appointment, I see no coherence and consistency; no, not even in the
very sacrament of his faith! For what end does baptism serve, according to
him? If the remission of sins, how will he make it evident that he remits
sins, when he affords no evidence that he retains them? Because he would
retain them, if he performed the functions of a judge. If deliverance from
death, how could he deliver from death, who has not delivered to death? For
he must have delivered the sinner to death, if he had from the beginning
condemned sin. If the regeneration of man, how can he regenerate, who has
never generated? For the repetition of an act is impossible to him, by whom
nothing any time has been ever done. If the bestowal of the Holy Ghost, how
will he bestow the Spirit, who did not at first impart the life? For the
life is in a sense the supplement(5) of the Spirit. He therefore seals man,
who had never been unsealed(6) in respect of him;(7) washes man, who had
never been defiled so far as he was concerned;(7) and into this sacrament
of salvation wholly plunges that flesh which is beyond the pale of
salvation!(8) No farmer will irrigate ground that will yield him no fruit
in return, except he be as stupid as Marcion's god. Why then impose
sanctity upon our most infirm and most unworthy flesh, either as a burden
or as a glory? What shall I say, too, of the uselessness of a discipline
which sanctifies what is already sanctified? Why burden the infirm, or
glorify the unworthy? Why not remunerate with salvation what it burdens or
else glorifies? Why keep back from a work its due reward, by not
recompensing the flesh with salvation? Why even permit the honour of
sanctity in it to die?

CHAP. XXIX.--MARCION FORBIDS MARRIAGE. TERTULLIAN ELOQUENTLY DEFENDS IT AS
HOLY, AND CAREFULLY DISCRIMINATES BETWEEN MARCION'S DOCTRINE AND HIS OWN
MONTANISM.

   The flesh is not, according to Marcion, immersed in the water of the
sacrament, unless it be(9) in virginity, widowhood, or celibacy, or has
purchased by divorce a title to baptism, as if even generative
impotents(10) did not all receive their flesh from nuptial union. Now, such
a scheme as this must no doubt involve the proscription of marriage. Let us
see, then, whether it be a just one: not as if we aimed at destroying the
happiness of sanctity, as do certain Nicolaitans in their maintenance of
lust and luxury, but as those who have come to the knowledge of sanctity,
and pursue it and prefer it, without detriment, however, to marriage; not
as if we superseded a bad thing by a good, but only a good thing by a
better. For we do not reject marriage, but simply refrain from it.(1) Nor
do we prescribe sanctity(2) as the rule, but only recommend it, observing
it as a good, yea, even the better state, if each man uses it carefully(3)
according to his ability; but at the same time earnestly vindicating
marriage, whenever hostile attacks are made against it is a polluted thing,
to the disparagement of the Creator. For He bestowed His blessing on
matrimony also, as on an honourable estate, for the increase of the human
race; as He did indeed on the whole of His creation,(4) for wholesome and
good uses. Meats and drinks are not on this account to be condemned,
because, when served up with too exquisite a daintiness, they conduce to
gluttony; nor is raiment to be blamed, because, when too costlily adorned,
it becomes inflated with vanity and pride. So, on the same principle, the
estate of matrimony is not to be refused, because, when enjoyed without
moderation, it is fanned into a voluptuous flame. There is a great
difference between a cause and a fault,(5) between a state and its excess.
Consequently it is not an institution of this nature that is to be blamed,
but the extravagant use of it; according to the judgment of its founder
Himself, who not only said, "Be fruitful, and multiply,"(6) but also, "Thou
shalt not commit adultery," and, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
wife;"(7) and who threatened with death the unchaste, sacrilegious, and
monstrous abomination both of adultery and unnatural sin with man and
beast.(8) Now, if any limitation is set to marrying--such as the spiritual
rule,(9) which prescribes but one marriage under the Christian
obedience,(10) maintained by the authority of the Paraclete,(11)--it will
be His prerogative to fix the limit Who had once been diffuse in His
permission; His to gather, Who once scattered; His to cut down the tree,
Who planted it; His to reap the harvest, Who sowed the seed; His to
declare, "It remaineth that they who have wives be as though they had
none,"(12) Who once said, "Be fruitful, and multiply;" His the end to Whom
belonged the beginning. Nevertheless, the tree is not cut down as if it
deserved blame; nor is the corn reaped, as if it were to be condemned,--but
simply because their time is come. So likewise the state of matrimony does
not require the hook and scythe of sanctity, as if it were evil; but as
being ripe for its discharge, and in readiness for that sanctity which will
in the long run bring it a plenteous crop by its reaping. For this leads me
to remark of Marcion's god, that in reproaching marriage as an evil and
unchaste thing, he is really prejudicing the cause of that very sanctity
which he seems to serve. For he destroys the material on which it subsists;
if there is to be no marriage, there is no sanctity. All proof of
abstinence is lost when excess is impossible; for sundry things have thus
their evidence in their contraries. Just as "strength is made perfect in
weakness,"(13) so likewise is continence made manifest by the permission to
marry. Who indeed will be called continent, if that be taken away which
gives him the opportunity of pursuing a life of continence? What room for
temperance in appetite does famine give? What repudiation of ambitious
projects does poverty afford? What bridling of lust can the eunuch merit?
To put a complete stop, however, to the sowing of the human race, may, for
aught I know, be quite consistent for Marcion's most good and excellent
god. For how could he desire the salvation of man, whom he forbids to be
born, when he takes away that institution from which his birth arises? How
will he find any one on whom to set the mark of his goodness, when he
suffers him not to come into existence? How is it possible to love him
whose origin he hates? Perhaps he is afraid of a redundant population, lest
he should be weary in liberating so many; lest he should have to make many
heretics; lest Marcionite parents should produce too many noble disciples
of Marcion. The cruelty of Pharaoh, which slew its victims at their birth,
will not prove to be more inhuman in comparison.(14) For while he destroyed
lives, our heretic's god refuses to give them: the one removes from life,
the other admits none to it. There is no difference in either as to their
homicide--man is slain by both of them; by the former just after birth, by
the latter as yet unborn. Thanks should we owe thee, thou god of our
heretic, hadst thou only checked(1) the dispensation of the Creator in
uniting male and female; for from such a union indeed has thy Marcion been
born! Enough; however, of Marcion's god, who is shown to have absolutely no
existence at all, both by our definitions(2) of the one only Godhead, and
the condition of his attributes.(3) The whole course, however, of this
little work aims directly at this conclusion. If, therefore, we seem to
anybody to have achieved but little result as yet, let him reserve his
expectations, until we examine the very Scripture which Marcion quotes.

THE FIVE BOOKS AGAINST MARCION.

BOOK II.(1)

WHEREIN TERTULLIAN SHOWS THAT THE CREATOR, OR DEMIURGE, WHOM MARCION
CALUMNIATED, IS THE TRUE AND GOOD GOD.

CHAP. I.--THE METHODS OF MARCION'S ARGUMENT INCORRECT AND ABSURD. THE
PROPER COURSE OF THE ARGUMENT.

   THE Occasion of reproducing this little work, the fortunes of which we
noticed in the preface of our first book, has furnished us with the
opportunity of distinguishing, in our treatment of the subject of two Gods
in opposition to Marcion, each of them with a description and section of
his own, according to the division of the subject-matter, defining one of
the gods to have no existence at all, and maintaining of the Other that He
is rightly(2) God; thus far keeping pace with the heretic of Pontus, who
has been pleased to admit one unto, and exclude the other.(3) For he could
not build up his mendacious scheme without pulling down the system of
truth. He found it necessary to demolish(4) some other thing, in order to
build up the theory which he wished. This process, however, is like
constructing a house without preparing suitable materials.(5) The
discussion ought to have been directed to this point alone, that he is no
god who supersedes the Creator. Then, when the false god had been excluded
by certain rules which prescriptively settle what is the character of the
One only perfect Divinity, there could have remained no longer any question
as to the true God. The proof of His existence would have been clear, and
that, too, amid the failure of all evidence in support of any other god;
and still clearer(6) would have seemed the point as to the honour in which
He ought without controversy to be held: that He ought to be worshipped
rather than judged; served reverentially rather than handled critically, or
even dreaded for His severity. For what was more fully needed by man than a
careful estimate of(7) the true God, on whom, so to speak, he had
alighted,(8) because there was no other god?

CHAP. II.--THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF GOD THE CREATOR. THE HERETICS PRETENDED TO
A KNOWLEDGE OF THE DIVINE BEING, OPPOSED TO AND SUBVERSIVE OF REVELATION.
GOD'S NATURE AND WAYS PAST HUMAN DISCOVERY. ADAM'S HERESY.

   We have now, then, cleared our way to the contemplation of the Almighty
God, the Lord and Maker of the universe. His greatness, as I think, is
shown in this, that from the beginning He made Himself known: He never hid
Himself, but always shone out brightly, even before the time of Romulus, to
say nothing of that of Tiberius; with the exception indeed that the
heretics, and they alone, know Him not, although they take such pains about
Him. They on this account suppose that another god must be assumed to
exist, because they are more able to censure than deny Him whose existence
is so evident, deriving all their thoughts about God from the deductions of
sense; just as if some blind man, or a man of imperfect vision,(9) chose to
assume some other sun of milder and healthier ray, because he sees not that
which is the object of sight.(10) There is, O man, but one sun which
rules(1) this world and even when you think otherwise of him, he is best
and useful; and although to you he may seem too fierce and baneful, or
else, it may be, too sordid and corrupt, he yet is true to the laws of his
own existence. Unable as you are to see through those laws, you would be
equally impotent to bear the rays of any other sun, were there one, however
great and good. Now, you whose sight is defective(2) in respect of the
inferior god, what is your view of the sublimer One? Really you are too
lenient(3) to your weakness; and set not yourself to the proof(4) of
things, holding God to be certainly, undoubtedly, and therefore
sufficiently known, the very moment you have discovered Him to exist,
though you know Him not except on the side where He has willed His proofs
to lie. But you do not even deny God intelligently,(5) you treat of Him
ignorantly;(6) nay, you accuse Him with a semblance of intelligence,(7)
whom if you did but know Him, you would never accuse, nay, never treat
of.(8) You give Him His name indeed, but you deny the essential truth of
that name, that is, the greatness which is called God; not acknowledging it
to be such as, were it possible for it to have been known to man in every
respect,(9) would not be greatness. Isaiah even so early, with the
clearness of an apostle, foreseeing the thoughts of heretical hearts,
asked, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His
counsellor? With whom took He counsel? ... or who taught Him knowledge, and
showed to Him the way of understanding?"(10) With whom the apostle agreeing
exclaims, "Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding
out!"(11) "His judgments unsearchable," as being those of God the Judge;
and "His ways past finding out," as comprising an understanding and
knowledge which no man has ever shown to Him, except it may be those
critics of the Divine Being, who say, God ought not to have been this,(12)
and He ought rather to have been that; as if any one knew what is in God,
except the Spirit of God.(13) Moreover, having the spirit of the world, and
"in the wisdom of God by wisdom knowing not God,"(14) they seem to
themselves to be wiser(15) than God; because, as the wisdom of the world is
foolishness with God, so also the wisdom of God is folly in the world's
esteem. We, however, know that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men."(16) Accordingly, God is then
especially great, when He is small(17) to man; then especially good, when
not good in man's judgment; then especially unique, when He seems to man to
be two or more. Now, if from the very first "the natural man, not receiving
the things of the Spirit of God,"(18) has deemed God's law to be
foolishness, and has therefore neglected to observe it; and as a further
consequence, by his not having faith, "even that which he seemeth to have
hath been taken from him"(19)--such as the grace of paradise and the
friendship of God, by means of which he might have known all things of God,
if he had continued in his obedience--what wonder is it, if he,(20) reduced
to his material nature, and banished to the toil of tilling the ground, has
in his very labour, downcast and earth-gravitating as it was, handed on
that earth-derived spirit of the world to his entire race, wholly
natural(21) and heretical as it is, and not receiving the things which
belong to God? Or who will hesitate to declare the great sin of Adam to
have been heresy, when he committed it by the choice(22) of his own will
rather than of God's? Except that Adam never said to his fig-tree, Why hast
thou made me thus? He confessed that he was led astray; and he did not
conceal the seducer. He was a very rude heretic. He was disobedient; but
yet he did not blaspheme his Creator, nor blame that Author of his being,
Whom from the beginning of his life he had found to be so good and
excellent, and Whom he had perhaps(23) made his own judge from the very
first.

CHAP. III.--GOD KNOWN BY HIS WORKS. HIS GOODNESS SHOWN IN HIS CREATIVE
ENERGY; BUT EVERLASTING IN ITS NATURE; INHERENT IN GOD, PREVIOUS TO ALL
EXHIBITION OF IT. THE FIRST STAGE OF THIS GOODNESS PRIOR TO MAN.

   It will therefore be right for us, as we enter on the examination of
the known God, when the question arises, in what condition He is known to
us, to begin with His works, which are prior to man; so that His goodness,
being discovered immediately along with Himself, and then constituted and
prescriptively settled, may suggest to us some sense whereby we may
understand how the subsequent order of things came about. The disciples of
Marcion, moreover, may possibly be able, while recognising the goodness of
our God, to learn how worthy it is likewise of the Divine Being, on those
very grounds whereby we have proved it to be unworthy in the case of their
god. Now this very point,(1) which is a material one in their scheme,(2)
Marcion did not find in any other god, but eliminated it for himself out of
his own god. The first goodness, then,(3) was that of the Creator, whereby
God was unwilling to remain hidden for ever; in other words, (unwilling)
that there should not be a something by which God should become known. For
what, indeed, is so good as the knowledge and fruition(4) of God? Now,
although it did not transpires that this was good, because as yet there
existed nothing to which it could transpire, yet God foreknew what good
would eventually transpire, and therefore He set Himself about
developing(6) His own perfect goodness, for the accomplishment of the good
which was to transpire; not, indeed, a sudden goodness issuing m some
accidental boon(7) or in some excited impulse,(8) such as must be dated
simply from the moment when it began to operate. For if it did itself
produce its own beginning when it began to operate, it had not, in fact, a
beginning itself when it acted. When, however, an initial act had been once
done by it, the scheme of temporal seasons began, for distinguishing and
noting which, the stars and luminaries of heaven were arranged in their
order. "Let them be," says God, "for seasons, and for days, and years."(9)
Previous, then, to this temporal course, (the goodness) which created time
had not time; nor before that beginning which the same goodness originated,
had it a beginning. Being therefore without aIl order of a beginning, and
all mode of time, it will be reckoned to possess an age, measureless in
extent(10) and endless in duration;(11) nor will it be possible to regard
it as a sudden or adventitious or impulsive emotion, because it has nothing
to occasion such an estimate of itself; in other words, no sort of temporal
sequence. It must therefore be accounted an eternal attribute, inbred in
God,(12) and everlasting,(13) and on this account worthy of the Divine
Being, putting to shame for ever(14) the benevolence of Marcion's god,
subsequent as he is to (I will not say) all beginnings and times, but to
the very malignity of the Creator, if indeed malignity could possibly have
been found in goodness.

CHAP. IV.--THE NEXT STAGE OCCURS IN THE CREATION OF MAN BY THE ETERNAL
WORD. SPIRITUAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL GIFTS TO MAN. THE BLESSINGS OF MAN'S
FREE-WILL.

   The goodness of God having, therefore, provided man for the pursuit of
the knowledge of Himself, added this to its original notification,(15) that
it first prepared a habitation for him, the vast fabric (of the world) to
begin with, and then afterwards(16) the vaster one(of a higher world,(17))
that he might on a great as well as on a smaller stage practise and advance
in his probation, and so be promoted from the good which God had given him,
that is, from his high position, to God's best; that is, to some higher
abode.(18) In this good work God employs a most excellent minister, even
His own Word. "My heart" He says, "hath emitted my most excellent
Word."(19) Let Marcion take hence his first lesson on the noble fruit of
this truly most excellent tree. But, like a most clumsy clown, he has
grafted a good branch on a bad stock. The sapling, however, of his
blasphemy shall be never strong: it shall wither with its planter, and thus
shall be manifested the nature of the good tree. Look at the total result:
how fruitful was the Word! God issued His fiat, and it was done: God also
saw that it was good;(1) not as if He were ignorant of the good until He
saw it; but because it was good, He therefore saw it, and honoured it, and
set His seal upon it; and consummated(2) the goodness of His works by His
vouchsafing to them that contemplation. Thus God blessed what He made good,
in order that He might commend Himself to you as whole and perfect, good
both in word and act.(3) As yet the Word knew no malediction, because He
was a stranger to malefaction.(4) We shall see what reasons required this
also of God. Meanwhile the world consisted of all things good, plainly
foreshowing how much good was preparing for him for whom all this was
provided. Who indeed was so worthy of dwelling amongst the works of God, as
he who was His own image and likeness? That image was wrought out by a
goodness even more operative than its wont,(5) with no imperious word, but
with friendly hand preceded by an almost affable(6) utterance: "Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness."(7) Goodness spake the word; Goodness
formed man of the dust of the ground into so great a substance of the
flesh, built up out of one material with so many qualities; Goodness
breathed into him a soul, not dead but living. Goodness gave him
dominion(8) over all things, which he was to enjoy and rule over, and even
give names to. In addition to this, Goodness annexed pleasures(9) to man so
that, while master of the whole world,(10) he might tarry among higher
delights, being translated into paradise, out of the world into the
Church.(11) The self-same Goodness provided also a help meet for him, that
there might be nothing in his lot that was not good. For, said He, that the
man be alone is not good.(12) He knew full well what a blessing to him
would be the sex of Mary,(13) and also of the Church. The law, however,
which you find fault with,(14) and wrest into a subject of contention, was
imposed on man by Goodness, aiming at his happiness, that he might cleave
to God, and so not show himself an abject creature rather than a free one,
nor reduce himself to the level of the other animals, his subjects, which
were free from God, and exempt from all tedious subjection;(15) but might,
as the sole human being, boast that he alone was worthy of receiving laws
from God; and as a rational being, capable of intelligence and knowledge,
be restrained within the bounds of rational liberty, subject to Him who had
subjected all things unto him. To secure the observance of this law,
Goodness likewise took counsel by help of this sanction: "In the day that
thou eatest thereof, thou shall surely die."(16) For it was a most
benignant act of His thus to point out the issues of transgression, lest
ignorance of the danger should encourage a neglect of obedience. Now,
since(17) it was given as a reason previous to the imposition of the law,
it also amounted to a motive for subsequently observing it, that a penalty
was annexed to its transgression; a penalty, indeed, which He who proposed
it was still unwilling that it should be incurred. Learn then the goodness
of our God amidst these things and up to this point; learn it from His
excellent works, from His kindly blessings, from His indulgent bounties,
from His gracious providences, from His laws and warnings, so good and
merciful.

CHAP. V.--MARCION'S CAVILS CONSIDERED. HIS OBJECTION REFUTED, I.E., MAN'S
FALL SHOWED FAILURE IN GOD. THE PERFECTION OF MAN'S BEING LAY IN HIS
LIBERTY, WHICH GOD PURPOSELY BESTOWED ON HIM. THE FALL IMPUTABLE TO MAN'S
OWN CHOICE.

   Now then, ye dogs, whom the apostle puts outside,(18) and who yelp at
the God of truth, let us come to your various questions. These are the
bones of contention, which you are perpetually gnawing! If God is good, and
prescient of the future, and able to avert evil, why did He permit man, the
very image and likeness of Himself, and, by the origin of his soul, His own
substance too, to be deceived by the devil, and fall from obedience of the
law into death? For if He had been good, and so unwilling that such a
catastrophe should happen, and prescient, so as not to be ignorant of what
was to come to pass, and powerful enough to hinder its occurrence, that
issue would never have come about, which should be impossible under these
three conditions of the divine greatness. Since, however, it has occurred,
the contrary proposition is most certainly true, that God must be deemed
neither good, nor prescient, nor powerful. For as no such issue could have
happened had God been such as He is reputed--good, and prescient, and
mighty--so has this issue actually happened, because He is not such a God.
In reply, we must first vindicate those attributes in the Creator which are
called in question--namely, His goodness and foreknowledge, and power. But
I shall not linger long over this point(1) for Christ's own definition(2)
comes to our aid at once. From works must proofs be obtained. The Creator's
works testify at once to His goodness, since they are good, as we have
shown, and to His power, since they are mighty, and spring indeed out of
nothing. And even if they were made out of some (previous) matter, as
some(3) will have it, they are even thus out of nothing, because they were
not what they are. In short, both they are great because they are good;
and(4) God is likewise mighty, because all things are His own, whence He is
almighty. But what shall I say of His prescience, which has for its
witnesses as many prophets as it inspired? After all,(5) what title to
prescience do we look for in the Author of the universe, since it was by
this very attribute that He foreknew all things when He appointed them
their places, and appointed them their places when He fore knew them? There
is sin itself. If He had not foreknown this, He would not have proclaimed a
caution against it under the penalty of death. Now if there were in God
such attributes as must have rendered it both impossible and improper for
any evil to have happened to man,(6) and yet evil did occur, let us
consider man's condition also--whether it were not, in fact, rather the
cause why that came to pass which could not have happened through God. I
find, then, that man was by God constituted free, master of his own will
and power; indicating the presence of God's image and likeness in him by
nothing so well as by this constitution of his nature. For it was not by
his face, and by the lineaments of his body, though they were so varied in
his human nature, that he expressed his likeness to the form of God; but he
showed his stamp(7) in that essence which he derived from God Himself (that
is, the spiritual,(8) which answered to the form of God), and in the
freedom and power of his will. This his state was confirmed even by the
very law which God then imposed upon him. For a law would not be imposed
upon one who had it not in his power to render that obedience which is due
to law; nor again, would the penalty of death be threatened against sin, if
a contempt of the law were impossible to man in the liberty of his will. So
in the Creator's subsequent laws also you will find, when He sets before
man good and evil, life and death, that the entire course of discipline is
arranged in precepts by God's calling men from sin, and threatening and
exhorting them; and this on no other ground than(9) that man is free, with
a will either for obedience or resistance.

CHAP. VI.--THIS LIBERTY VINDICATED IN RESPECT OF ITS ORIGINAL CREATION;
SUITABLE ALSO FOR EXHIBITING THE GOODNESS AND THE PURPOSE OF GOD. REWARD
AND PUNISHMENT IMPOSSIBLE IF MAN WERE GOOD OR EVIL THROUGH NECESSITY AND
NOT CHOICE.

   But although we shall be understood, from our argument, to be only so
affirming man's unshackled power over his will, that what happens to him
should be laid to his own charge, and not to God's, yet that you may not
object, even now, that he ought not to have been so constituted, since his
liberty and power of will might turn out to be injurious, I will first of
all maintain that he was rightly so constituted, that I may with the
greater confidence commend both his actual constitution, and the additional
fact of its being worthy of the Divine Being; the cause which led to man's
being created with such a constitution being shown to be the better one.
Moreover, man thus constituted will be protected by both the goodness of
God and by His purpose,(10) both of which are always found in concert in
our God. For His purpose is no purpose without goodness; nor is His
goodness goodness without a purpose, except forsooth in the case of
Marcion's god, who is purposelessly (11) good, as we have shown.(12) Well,
then, it was proper that God should be known; it was no doubt(13) a good
and reasonable(14) thing. Proper also was it that there should be something
worthy of knowing God. What could be found so worthy as the image and
likeness of God? This also was undoubtedly good and reasonable. Therefore
it was proper that (he who is) the image and likeness of God should be
formed with a free will and a mastery of himself;(1) so that this very
thing--namely, freedom of will and self-command--might be reckoned as the
image and likeness of God in him. For this purpose such an essence(2) was
adapted(3) to man as suited this character,(4) even the afflatus of the
Deity, Himself free and uncontrolled.(5) But if you will take some other
view of the case,(6) how came it to pass (7) that man, when in possession
of the whole world, did not above all things reign in self-possession(8)--a
master over others, a slave to himself? The goodness of God, then, you can
learn from His gracious gift(9) to man, and His purpose from His disposal
of all things.(10) At present, let God's goodness alone occupy our
attention, that which gave so large a gift to man, even the liberty of his
will. God's purpose claims some other opportunity of treatment, offering as
it does instruction of like import. Now, God alone is good by nature. For
He, who has that which is without beginning, has it not by creation,(11)
but by nature. Man, however, who exists entirely by creation, having a
beginning, along with that beginning obtained the form in which he exists;
and thus he is not by nature disposed to good, but by creation, not having
it as his own attribute to be good, because, (as we have said,) it is not
by nature, but by creation, that he is disposed to good, according to the
appointment of his good Creator, even the Author of all good. In order,
therefore, that man might have a goodness of his own,(12) bestowed(13) on
him by God, and there might be henceforth in man a property, and in a
certain sense a natural attribute of goodness, there was assigned to him in
the constitution of his nature, as a formal witness(14) of the goodness
which God bestowed upon him, freedom and power of the will, such as should
cause good to be performed spontaneously by man, as a property of his own,
on the ground that no less than this(15) would be required in the matter of
a goodness which was to be voluntarily exercised by him, that is to say, by
the liberty of his will, without either favour or servility to the
constitution of his nature, so that man should be good(16) just up to this
point,(17) if he should display his goodness in accordance with his natural
constitution indeed, but still as the result of his will, as a property of
his nature; and, by a similar exercise of volition,(18) should show himself
to be too strong(19) in defence against evil also (for even this God, of
course, foresaw), being free, and master of himself; because, if he were
wanting in this prerogative of self-mastery, so as to perform even good by
necessity and not will, he would, in the helplessness of his servitude,
become subject to the usurpation of evil, a slave as much to evil as to
good. Entire freedom of will, therefore, was conferred upon him in both
tendencies; so that, as master of himself, he might constantly encounter
good by spontaneous observance of it, and evil by its spontaneous
avoidance; because, were man even otherwise circumstanced, it was yet his
bounden duty, in the judgment of God, to do justice according to the
motions(20) of his will regarded, of course, as free. But the reward
neither of good nor of evil could be paid to the man who should be found to
have been either good or evil through necessity and not choice. In this
really lay(21) the law which did not exclude, but rather prove, human
liberty by a spontaneous rendering of obedience, or a spontaneous
commission of iniquity; so patent was the liberty of man's will for either
issue. Since, therefore, both the goodness and purpose of God are(22)
discovered in the gift to man of freedom in his will, it is not right,
after ignoring the original definition of goodness and purpose which it was
necessary to determine previous to any discussion of the subject, on
subsequent facts to presume to say that God ought not in such a way to have
formed man, because the issue was other than what was assumed to be(23)
proper for God. We ought rather,(24) after duly considering that it behoved
God so to create man, to leave this consideration unimpaired, and to survey
the other aspects of the case. It is, no doubt, an easy process for persons
who take offence at the fall of man, before they have looked into the facts
of his creation, to impute the blame of what happened to the Creator,
without any examination of His purpose. To conclude: the goodness of God,
then fully considered from the beginning of His works, will be enough to
convince us that nothing evil could possibly have come forth from God; and
the liberty of man will, after a second thought,(1) show us that it alone
is chargeable with the fault which itself committed.

CHAP. VII.--IF GOD HAD ANYHOW CHECKED MAN'S LIBERTY, MARCION WOULD HAVE
BEEN READY WITH ANOTHER AND OPPOSITE CAVIL. MAN'S FALL FORESEEN BY GOD.
PROVISION MADE FOR IT REMEDIALLY AND CONSISTENTLY WITH HIS TRUTH AND
GOODNESS.

   By such a conclusion all is reserved(2) unimpaired to God; both His
natural goodness, and the purposes of His governance and foreknowledge, and
the abundance of His power. You ought, however, to deduct from God's
attributes both His supreme earnestness of purpose(3) and most excellent
truth in His whole creation, if you would cease to inquire whether anything
could have happened against the will of God. For, while holding this
earnestness and truth of the good God, which are indeed(4) capable of proof
from the rational creation, you will not wonder at the fact that God did
not interfere to prevent the occurrence of what He wished not to happen, in
order that He might keep from harm what He wished. For, since He had once
for all allowed (and, as we have shown, worthily allowed) to man freedom of
will and mastery of himself, surely He from His very authority in creation
permitted these gifts to be enjoyed: to be enjoyed, too, so far as lay in
Himself, according to His own character as God, that is, for good (for who
would permit anything hostile to himself?); and, so far as lay in man,
according to the impulses of his liberty (for who does not, when giving
anything to any one to enjoy, accompany the gift with a permission to enjoy
it with all his heart and will?). The necessary consequence,(5) therefore,
was, that God must separate from the liberty which He had once for all
bestowed upon man (in other words, keep within Himself), both His
foreknowledge and power, through which He might have prevented man's
falling into danger when attempting wrongly to enjoy his liberty. Now, if
He had interposed, He would have rescinded the liberty of man's will, which
He had permitted with set purpose, and in goodness. But, suppose God had
interposed; suppose Him to have abrogated man's liberty, by warning him
from the tree, and keeping off the subtle serpent from his interview with
the woman; would not Marcion then exclaim, What a frivolous, unstable, and
faithless Lord, cancelling the gifts He had bestowed! Why did He allow any
liberty of will, if He afterwards withdrew it? Why withdraw it after
allowing it? Let Him choose where to brand Himself with error, either in
His original constitution of man, or in His subsequent abrogation thereof!
If He had checked (man's freedom), would He not then seem to have been
rather deceived, through want of foresight into the future? But in giving
it full scope, who would not say that He did so in ignorance of the issue
of things? God, however, did fore-know that man would make a bad use of his
created constitution; and yet what can be so worthy of God as His
earnestness of purpose, and the truth of His created works, be they what
they may? Man must see, if he failed to make the most of(6) the good gift
he had received, how that he was himself guilty in respect of the law which
he did not choose to keep, and not that the Lawgiver was committing a fraud
against His own law, by not permitting its injunctions to be fulfilled.
Whenever you are inclined to indulge in such censure(7) (and it is the most
becoming for you) against the Creator, recall gently to your mind in His
behalf(8) His earnestness, and endurance, and truth, in having given
completeness(9) to His creatures both as rational and good.

CHAP. VIII.--MAN, ENDUED WITH LIBERTY, SUPERIOR TO THE ANGELS. OVERCOMES
EVEN THE ANGEL WHICH LURED HIM TO HIS FALL, WHEN REPENTANT AND RESUMING
OBEDIENCE TO GOD.

   For it was not merely that he might live the natural life that God had
produced man, but(10) that he should live virtuously, that is, in relation
to God and to His law. Accordingly, God gave him to live when he was formed
into a living soul; but He charged him to live virtuously when he was
required to obey a law. So also God shows that man was not constituted for
death, by now wishing that he should be restored to life, preferring the
sinner's repentance to his death.(11) As, therefore, God designed for man a
condition of life, so man brought on himself a state of death; and this,
too, neither through infirmity nor through ignorance, so that no blame can
be imputed to the Creator. No doubt it was an angel who was the seducer;
but then the victim of that seduction was free, and master of himself; and
as being the image and likeness of God, was stronger than any angel; and as
being, too, the afflatus of the Divine Being, was nobler than that material
spirit of which angels were made. Who maketh, says he, His angels spirits,
and His ministers a flame of fire.(1) He would not have made all things
subject to man, if he had been too weak for the dominion, and inferior to
the angels, to whom He assigned no such subjects; nor would He have put the
burden of law upon him, if he had been incapable of sustaining so great a
weight; nor, again, would He have threatened with the penalty of death a
creature whom He knew to be guiltless on the score of his helplessness: in
short, if He had made him infirm, it would not have been by liberty and
independence of will, but rather by the withholding from him these
endowments. And thus it comes to pass, that even now also, the same human
being, the same substance of his soul, the same condition as Adam's, is
made conqueror over the same devil by the self-same liberty and power of
his will, when it moves in obedience to the laws of God.(2)

CHAP. IX.--ANOTHER CAVIL ANSWERED, I.E., THE FALL IMPUTABLE TO GOD, BECAUSE
MAN'S SOUL IS A PORTION OF THE SPIRITUAL ESSENCE OF THE CREATOR. THE DIVINE
AFFLATUS NOT IN FAULT IN THE SIN OF MAN, BUT THE HUMAN WILL WHICH WAS
ADDITIONAL TO IT.

   But, you say, in what way soever the substance of the Creator is found
to be susceptible of fault, when the afflatus of God, that is to say, the
soul,(3) offends in man, it cannot but be that that fault of the portion is
referrible to the original whole. Now, to meet this objection, we must
explain the nature(4) of the soul. We must at the outset hold fast the
meaning of the Greek scripture, which has afflatus, not spirit.(5) Some
interpreters of the Greek, without reflecting on the difference of the
words, and careless about their exact meaning, put spirit for afflatus;
they thus afford to heretics an opportunity of tarnishing(6) the Spirit of
God, that is to say, God Himself, with default. And now comes the question.
Afflatus, observe then, is less than spirit, although it comes from spirit;
it is the spirit's gentle breeze,(7) but it is not the spirit. Now a breeze
is rarer than the wind; and although it proceeds from wind, yet a breeze is
not the wind. One may call a breeze the image of the spirit. In the same
manner, man is the image of God, that is, of spirit; for God is spirit.
Afflatus is therefore the image of the spirit. Now the image is not in any
case equal to the very thing.(8) It is one thing to be like the reality,
and another thing to be the reality itself. So, although the afflatus is
the image of the spirit, it is yet not possible to compare the image of God
in such a way, that, because the reality--that is, the spirit, or in other
words, the Divine Being--is faultless, therefore the afflatus also, that is
to say, the image, ought not by any possibility to have done wrong. In this
respect will the image be less than the reality, and the afflatus inferior
to the spirit, in that, while it possesses beyond doubt the true lineaments
of divinity, such as an immortal soul, freedom and its own mastery over
itself, foreknowledge in a great degree,(9) reasonableness, capacity of
understanding and knowledge, it is even in these respects an image still,
and never amounts to the actual power of Deity, nor to absolute exemption
from fault,--a property which is only conceded to God, that is, to the
reality, and which is simply incompatible with an image. An image, although
it may express all the lineaments of the reality, is yet wanting in its
intrinsic power; it is destitute of motion. In like manner, the soul, the
image of the spirit, is unable to express the simple power thereof, that is
to say, its happy exemption from sinning.(10) Were it otherwise,(11) it
would not be soul, but spirit; not man, who received a soul, but God.
Besides, to take another view of the matter,(12) not everything which
pertains to God will be regarded as God, so that you would not maintain
that His afflatus was God, that is, exempt from fault, because it is the
breath of God. And in an act of your own, such as blowing into a flute, you
would not thereby make the flute human, although it was your own human
breath which you breathed into it, precisely as God breathed of His own
Spirit, In fact,(13) the Scripture, by expressly saying(14) that God
breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and that man became
thereby a living soul, not a life-giving spirit, has distinguished that
soul from the condition of the Creator. The work must necessarily be
distinct from the workman, and it is inferior to him. The pitcher will not
be the potter, although made by the potter; nor in like manner, will the
afflatus, because made by the spirit, be on that account the spirit. The
soul has often been called by the same name as the breath. You should also
take care that no descent be made from the breath to a still lower quality.
So you have granted (you say) the infirmity of the soul, which you denied
before! Undoubtedly, when you demand for it an equality with God, that is,
a freedom from fault, I contend that it is infirm. But when the comparison
is challenged with an angel, I am compelled to maintain that the head over
all things is the stronger of the two, to whom the angels are ministers,(1)
who is destined to be the judge of angels,(2) if he shall stand fast in the
law of God--an obedience which he refused at first. Now this
disobedience(3) it was possible for the afflatus of God to commit: it was
possible, but it was not proper. The possibility lay in its slenderness of
nature, as being the breath and not the spirit; the impropriety, however,
arose from its power of will, as being free, and not a slave. It was
furthermore assisted by the warning against committing sin under the threat
of incurring death, which was meant to be a support for its slender nature,
and a direction for its liberty of choice. So that the soul can no longer
appear to have sinned, because it has an affinity with God, that is to say,
through the afflatus, but rather through that which was an addition to its
nature, that is, through its free-will, which was indeed given to it by God
in accordance with His purpose and reason, but recklessly employed(4) by
man according as he chose. This, then, being the case, the entire course(5)
of God's action is purged from all imputation to evil. For the liberty of
the will will not retort its own wrong on Him by whom it was bestowed, but
on him by whom it was improperly used. What is the evil, then, which you
want to impute to the Creator? If it is man's sin, it will not be God's
fault, because it is man's doing; nor is that Being to be regarded as the
author of the sin, who turns out to be its forbidder, nay, its condemner.
If death is the evil, death will not give the reproach of being its own
author to Him who threatened it, but to him who despised it. For by his
contempt he introduced it, which assuredly(6) would not have appeared had
man not despised it.

CHAP. X.--ANOTHER CAVIL MET, I.E., THE DEVIL WHO INSTIGATED MAN TO SIN
HIMSELF THE CREATURE OF GOD. NAY, THE PRIMEVAL CHERUB ONLY WAS GOD'S WORK.
THE DEVILISH NATURE SUPERADDED BY WILFULNESS. IN MAN'S RECOVERY THE DEVIL
IS VANQUISHED IN A CONFLICT ON HIS OWN GROUND.

   If, however, you choose to transfer the account(7) of evil from man to
the devil as the instigator of sin, and in this way, too, throw the blame
on the Creator, inasmuch as He created the devil,--for He maketh those
spirtual beings, the angels--then it will follow that(8) what was made,
that is to say, the angel, will belong to Him who made it; while that which
was not made by God, even the devil, or accuser,(9) cannot but have been
made by itself; and this by false detraction(10) from God: first, how that
God had forbidden them to eat of every tree; then, with the pretence that
they should not die if they ate; thirdly, as if God grudged them the
property of divinity. Now, whence originated this malice of lying and
deceit towards man, and slandering of God? Most certainly not from God, who
made the angel good after the fashion of His good works. Indeed, before he
became the devil, he stands forth the wisest of creatures; and(11) wisdom
is no(11) evil. if you turn to the prophecy of Ezekiel, you will at once
perceive that this angel was both by creation good and by choice corrupt.
For in the person of the prince of Tyre it is said in reference to the
devil: "Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man,
take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith
the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty"
(this belongs to him as the highest of the angels, the archangel, the
wisest of all); "amidst the delights of the paradise of thy God wast thou
born" (for it was there, where God had made the angels in a shape which
resembled the figure of animals). "Every precious stone was thy covering,
the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the
jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle; and with gold hast
thou filled thy barns and thy treasuries. From the day when thou wast
created, when I set thee, a cherub, upon the holy mountain of God, thou
wast in the midst of stones of fire, thou wast irreproachable in thy days,
from the day of thy creation, until thine iniquities were discovered. By
the abundance of thy merchandise thou hast filled thy storehouses, and thou
hast sinned," etc.(1) This description, it is manifest, properly belongs to
the transgression of the angel, and not to the prince's: for none among
human beings was either born in the paradise of God, not even Adam himself,
who was rather translated thither; nor placed with a cherub upon God's holy
mountain, that is to say, in the heights of heaven, from which the Lord
testifies that Satan fell; nor detained amongst the stones of fire, and the
flashing rays of burning conStellations, whence Satan was cast down like
lightning.(2) No, it is none else than the very author of sin who was
denoted in the person of a sinful man: he was once irreproachable, at the
time of his creation, formed for good by God, as by the good Creator of
irreproachable creatures, and adorned with every angelic glory, and
associated with God, good with the Good; but afterwards of his own accord
removed to evil. From the day when thine iniquities,(3) says he, were
discovered,--attributing to him those injuries wherewith he injured man
when he was expelled from his allegiance to God,--even from that time did
he sin, when he propagated his sin, and thereby plied "the abundance of his
merchandise," that is, of his Wickedness, even the tale(4) of his
transgressions, because he was himself as a spirit no less (than man)
created, with the faculty of free-will. For God would in nothing fail to
endow a being who was to be next to Himself with a liberty of this kind.
Nevertheless, by precondemning him, God testified that he had departed from
the condition(5) of his created nature, through his own lusting after the
wickedness which was spontaneously conceived within him; and at the same
time, by conceding a permission for the operation of his designs, He acted
consistently with the purpose of His own goodness, deferring the devil's
destruction for the self-same reason as He postponed the restitution of
man. For He afforded room for a conflict, wherein man might crush his enemy
with the same freedom of his will as had made him succumb to him (proving
that the fault was all his own, not God's), and so worthily recover his
salvation by a victory; wherein also the devil might receive a more bitter
punishment, through being vanquished by him whom he had previously injured;
and wherein God might be discovered to be so much the more good, as
waiting(6) for man to return from his present life to a more glorious
paradise, with a right to pluck of the tree of life.(7)

CHAP. XI.--IF, AFTER MAN'S SIN, GOD EXERCISED HIS ATTRIBUTE OF JUSTICE AND
JUDGMENT, THIS WAS COMPATIBLE WITH HIS GOODNESS, AND ENHANCES THE TRUE IDEA
OF THE PERFECTION OF GOD'S CHARACTER.

   Up to the fall of man, therefore, from the beginning God was simply
good; after that He became a judge both severe and, as the Marcionites will
have it, cruel. Woman is at once condemned to bring forth in sorrow, and to
serve her husband,(8) although before she had heard without pain the
increase of her race proclaimed with the blessing, Increase and multiply,
and although she had been destined to be a help and not a slave to her male
partner. Immediately the earth is also cursed,(9) which before was blessed.
Immediately spring up briers and thorns, where once had grown grass, and
herbs, and fruitful trees. Immediately arise sweat and labour for bread,
where previously on every tree was yielded spontaneous food and
untilled(10) nourishment. Thenceforth it is "man to the ground," and not as
before, "from the ground; to death thenceforth, but before, to life;
thenceforth with coats of skins, but before, nakedness without a blush.
Thus God's prior goodness was from(11) nature, His subsequent severity
from(11) a cause. The one was innate, the other accidental; the one His
own, the other adapted;(12) the one issuing from Him, the other admitted by
Him. But then nature could not have rightly permitted His goodness to have
gone on inoperative, nor the cause have allowed His severity to have
escaped in disguise or concealment. God provided the one for Himself, the
other for the occasion.(13) You should now set about showing also that the
position of a judge is allied with evil, who have been dreaming of another
god as a purely good one--solely because you cannot understand the Deity to
be a judge; although we have proved God to be also a judge. Or if not a
judge, at any rate a perverse and useless originator of a discipline which
is not to be vindicated--in other words, not to be judged. You do not,
however, disprove God's being a judge, who have no proof to show that He is
a judge. You will undoubtedly have to accuse justice herself, which
provides the judge, or else to reckon her among the species of evil, that
is, to add injustice to the titles of goodness. But then justice is an
evil, if injustice is a good. And yet you are forced to declare injustice
to be one of the worst of things, and by the same rule are constrained to
class justice amongst the most excellent. Since there is nothing hostile(1)
to evil which is not good, and no enemy of good which is not evil. It
follows, then, that as injustice is an evil, so in the same degree is
justice a good. Nor should it be regarded as simply a species of goodness,
but as the practical observance(2) of it, because goodness (unless justice
be so controlled as to be just) will not be goodness, if it be unjust. For
nothing is good which is unjust; while everything, on the other hand, which
is just is good.

CHAP. XII.--THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOODNESS AND JUSTICE SHOULD NOT BE SEPARATED.
THEY ARE COMPATIBLE IN THE TRUE GOD. THE FUNCTION OF JUSTICE IN THE DIVINE
BEING DESCRIBED.

   Since, therefore, there is this union and agreement between goodness
and justice, you cannot prescribes their separation. With what face will
you determine the separation of your two Gods, regarding in their separate
condition one as distinctively the good God, and the other as distinctively
the just God? Where the just is, there also exists the good. in short, from
the very first the Creator was both good and also just. And both His
attributes advanced together. His goodness created, His justice arranged,
the world; and in this process it even then decreed that the world should
be formed of good materials, because it took counsel with goodness. The
work of justice is apparent, in the separation which was pronounced between
light and darkness, between day and night, between heaven and earth,
between the water above and the water beneath, between the gathering
together of the sea and the mass of the dry land, between the greater
lights and the lesser, between the luminaries of the day and those of the
night, between male and female, between the tree of knowledge of death and
of life, between the world and paradise, between the aqueous and the earth-
born animals. As goodness conceived all things, so did justice discriminate
them. With the determination of the latter, everything was arranged and set
in order. Every site and quality(4) of the elements, their effect, motion,
and state, the rise and setting of each, are the judicial determinations of
the Creator. Do not suppose that His function as a judge must be defined as
beginning I when evil began, and so tarnish His justice i with the cause of
evil. By such considerations, then, do we show that this attribute advanced
in company with goodness, the author s of all things,--worthy of being
herself, too, deemed innate and natural, and not as accidentally
accruing(6) to God, inasmuch as she was found to be in Him, her Lord, the
arbiter of His works.

CHAP. XIII.--FURTHER DESCRIPTION OF THE DIVINE JUSTICE; SINCE THE FALL OF
MAN IT HAS REGULATED THE DIVINE GOODNESS, GOD'S CLAIMS ON OUR LOVE AND OUR
FEAR RECONCILED.

   But yet, when evil afterwards broke out, and the goodness of God began
now to have an adversary to contend against, God's justice also acquired
another function, even that of directing His goodness according to men's
application for it.(7) And this is the result: the divine goodness, being
interrupted in that free course whereby God was spontaneously good, is now
dispensed according to the deserts of every man; it is offered to the
worthy, denied to the unworthy, taken away from the unthankful, and also
avenged on all its enemies. Thus the entire office of justice in this
respect becomes an agency(8) for goodness: whatever it condemns by its
judgment, whatever it chastises by its condemnation, whatever (to use your
phrase) it ruthlessly pursues,(9) it, in fact, benefits with good instead
of injuring. Indeed, the fear of judgment contributes to good, not to evil.
For good, now contending with an enemy, was not strong enough to recommend
itself(10) by itself alone. At all events, if it could do so much, it could
not keep its ground; for it had lost its impregnability through the foe,
unless some power of fear supervened, such as might compel the very
unwilling to seek after good, and take care of it. But who, when so many
incentives to evil were assailing him, would desire that good, which he
could despise with impunity? Who, again, would take care of what he could
lose without danger? You read bow broad is the road to evil,(11) how
thronged in comparison with the opposite: would not all glide down that
road were there nothing in it to fear? We dread the Creator's tremendous
threats, and yet scarcely turn away from evil. What, if He threatened not?
Will you call this justice an evil, when it is all unfavourable to evil?
Will you deny it to be a good, when it has its eye towards(1) good? What
sort of being ought you to wish God to be? Would it be right to prefer that
He should be such, that sins might flourish under Him, and the devil make
mock at Him? Would you suppose Him to be a good God, who should be able to
make a man worse by security in sin? Who is the author of good, but He who
also requires it? In like manner who is a stranger to evil, except Him who
is its enemy? Who its enemy, besides Him who is its conqueror? Who else its
conqueror, than He who is its punisher? Thus God is wholly good, because in
all things He is on the side of good. In fact, He is omnipotent, because
able both to help and to hurt. Merely to profit is a comparatively small
matter, because it can do nothing else than a good turn. From such a
conduct(2) with what confidence can I hope for good, if this is its only
ability? How can I follow after the reward of innocence, if I have no
regard to the requital of wrong-doing? I must needs have my doubts whether
he might not fail in recompensing one or other alternative, who was unequal
in his resources to meet both. Thus far, then, justice is the very fulness
of the Deity Himself, manifesting God as both a perfect father and a
perfect master: a father in His mercy, a master in His discipline; a father
in the mildness of His power, a master in its severity; a father who must
be loved with dutiful affection, a master who must needs be feared; be
loved, because He prefers mercy to sacrifice;(3) be feared because He
dislikes sin; be loved, because He prefers the sinner,s repentance to his
death;(4) be feared, because He dislikes the sinners who do not repent.
Accordingly, the divine law enjoins duties in respect of both these
attributes: Thou shalt love God, and, Thou shalt fear God. It proposed one
for the obedient man, the other for the transgressor.(5)

CHAP. XIV.--EVIL OF TWO KINDS, PENAL AND CRIMINAL. IT IS NOT OF THE LATTER
SORT THAT GOD IS THE AUTHOR, BUT ONLY OF THE FORMER, WHICH ARE PENAL, AND
INCLUDED IN HIS JUSTICE.

   On all occasions does God meet you: it is He who smites, but also
heals; who kills, but also makes alive; who humbles, and yet exalts; who
"creates(6) evil," but also "makes peace;"(7)--so that from these very
(contrasts Of His providence) I may get an answer to the heretics. Behold,
they say, how He acknowledges Himself to be the creator of evil in the
passage, "It is I who create evil." They take a word whose one form reduces
to confusion and ambiguity two kinds of evils (because both sins and
punishments are called evils), and will have Him in every passage to be
understood as the creator of all evil things, in order that He may be
designated the author of evil. We, on the contrary, distinguish between the
two meanings of the word in question, and, by separating evils of sin from
penal evils, mala culpoe from mala poenoe, confine to each of the two
classes its own author,--the devil as the author of the sinful evils
(culpoe), and God as the creator of penal evils (poenoe); so that the one
class shall be accounted as morally bad, and the other be classed as the
operations of justice passing penal sentences against the evils of sin. Of
the latter class of evils which are compatible with justice, God is
therefore avowedly the creator. They are, no doubt, evil to those by whom
they are endured, but still on their own account good, as being just and
defensive of good and hostile to sin. In this respect they are, moreover,
worthy of God. Else prove them to be unjust, in order to show them
deserving of a place in the sinful class, that is to say, evils of
injustice; because if they turn out to belong to justice, they will be no
longer evil things, but good--evil only to the bad, by whom even directly
good things are condemned as evil. In this case, you must decide that man,
although the wilful contemner of the divine law, unjustly bore the doom
which he would like to have escaped; that the wickedness of those days was
unjustly smitten by the deluge, afterwards by the fire (of Sodom); that
Egypt, although most depraved and superstititious, and, worse still, the
harasser of its guest-population,(8) was unjustly stricken with the
chastisement of its ten plagues. God hardens the heart of Pharaoh. He
deserved, however, to be influenced(9) to his destruction, who had already
denied God, already in his pride so often rejected His ambassadors,
accumulated heavy burdens on His people, and (to sum up all) as an
Egyptian, had long been guilty before God of Gentile idolatry, worshipping
the ibis and the crocodile in preference to the living God. Even His own
people did God visit in their ingratitude.(10) Against young lads, too, did
He send forth bears, for their irreverence to the prophet.(1)

CHAP. XV.--THE SEVERITY OF GOD COMPATIBLE WITH REASON AND JUSTICE. WHEN
INFLICTED, NOT MEANT TO BE ARBITRARY, BUT REMEDIAL.

   Consider well,(2) then, before all things the justice of the Judge; and
if its purpose(3) be clear, then the severity thereof, and the operations
of the severity in its course, will appear compatible with reason and
justice. Now, that we may not linger too long on the point, (I would
challenge you to) assert the other reasons also, that you may condemn the
Judge's sentences; extenuate the delinquencies of the sinner, that you may
blame his judicial conviction. Never mind censuring the Judge; rather prove
Him to be an unjust one. Well, then, even though(4) He required the sins of
the fathers at the hands of the children, the hardness of the people made
such remedial measures necessary s for them, in order that, having their
posterity in view, they might obey the divine law. For who is there that
feels not a greater care for his children than for himself? Again, if the
blessing of the fathers was destined likewise for their offspring, previous
to(6) any merit on the part of these, why might not the guilt of the
fathers also redound to their children? As was the grace, so was the
offence; so that the grace and the offence equally ran down through the
whole race, with the reservation, indeed, of that subsequent ordinance by
which it became possible to refrain from saying, that "the fathers had
eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth were set on edge:"(7) in other
words, that the father should not bear the iniquity of the son, nor the son
the iniquity of the father, but that every man should be chargeable with
his own sin; so that the harshness of the law having been reduced(8) after
the hardness of the people, justice was no longer to judge the race, but
individuals. If, however, you accept the gospel of truth, you will discover
on whom recoils the sentence of the Judge, when requiting on sons the sins
of their fathers, even on those who had been (hardened enough) to imprecate
spontaneously on themselves this condemnation: "His blood be on us, and on
our children."(9) This, therefore, the providence of God has ordered
throughout its course,(10) even as it had heard it.

CHAP. XVI.--TO THE SEVERITY OF GOD THERE BELONG ACCESSORY QUALITIES,
COMPATIBLE WITH JUSTICE. IF HUMAN PASSIONS ARE PREDICATED OF GOD, THEY MUST
NOT BE MEASURED ON THE SCALE OF HUMAN IMPERFECTION.

   Even His severity then is good, because just: when the judge is good,
that is just. Other. qualities likewise are good, by means of which the
good work of a good severity runs out its course, whether wrath, or
jealousy,(11) or sternness.(12) For all these are as indispensable(13) to
severity as severity is to justice. The shamelessness of an age, which
ought to have been reverent, had to be avenged. Accordingly, qualities
which pertain to the judge, when they are actually free from blame, as the
judge himself is, will never be able to be charged upon him as a fault.(14)
What would be said, if, when you thought the doctor necessary, you were to
find fault with his instruments, because they cut, or cauterize, or
amputate, or tighten; whereas there could be no doctor of any value without
his professional tools? Censure, if you please, the practitioner who cuts
badly, amputates clumsily, is rash in his cautery; and even blame his
implements as rough tools of his art. Your conduct is equally
unreasonable,(15) when you allow indeed that God is a judge, but at the
same time destroy those operations and dispositions by which He discharges
His judicial functions. We are taught(16) God by the prophets, and by
Christ, not by the philosophers nor by Epicurus. We who believe that God
really lived on earth, and took upon Him the low estate of human form,(17)
for the purpose of man's salvation, are very far from thinking as those do
who refuse to believe that God cares for(18) anything. Whence has found its
way to the heretics an argument of this kind: If God is angry, and jealous,
and roused, and grieved, He must therefore be corrupted, and must therefore
die. Fortunately, however, it is a part of the creed of Christians even to
believe that God did die,(19) and yet that He is alive for evermore.
Superlative is their folly, who prejudge divine things from human; so that,
because in man's corrupt condition there are found passions of this
description, therefore there must be deemed to exist in God also
sensations(1) of the same kind. Discriminate between the natures, and
assign to them their respective senses, which are as diverse as their
natures require, although they seem to have a community of designations. We
read, indeed, of God's right hand, and eyes, and feet: these must not,
however, be compared with those of human beings, because they are
associated in one and the same name. Now, as great as shall be the
difference between the divine and the human body, although their members
pass under identical names, so great will also be the diversity between the
divine and the human soul, notwithstanding that their sensations are
designated by the same names. These sensations in the human being are
rendered just as corrupt by the corruptibility of man's substance, as in
God they are rendered incorruptible by the incorruption of the divine
essence. Do you really believe the Creator to be God? By all means, is your
reply. How then do you suppose that in God there is anything human, and not
that all is divine? Him whom you do not deny to be God, you confess to be
not human; because, when you confess Him to be God, you have, in fact,
already determind that He is undoubtedly diverse from every sort of human
conditions. Furthermore, although you allow, with others,(2) that man was
inbreathed by God into a living soul, not God by man, it is yet palpably
absurd of you to be placing human characteristics in God rather than divine
ones in man, and clothing God in the likeness of man, instead of man in the
image of God. And this, therefore, is to be deemed the likeness of God in
man, that the human soul have the same emotions and sensations as God,
although they are not of the same kind; differing as they do both in their
conditions and their issues according to their nature. Then, again, with
respect to the opposite sensations,--I mean meekness, patience, mercy, and
the very parent of them all, goodness,--why do you form your opinion of(3)
the divine displays of these (from the human qualities)? For we indeed do
not possess them in perfection, because it is God alone who is perfect. So
also in regard to those others,--namely, anger and irritation. we are not
affected by them in so happy a manner, because God alone is truly happy, by
reason of His property of incorruptibility. Angry He will possibly be, but
not irritated, nor dangerously tempted;(4) He will be moved, but not
subverted.(5) All appliances He must needs use, because of all
contingencies; as many sensations as there are causes: anger because of the
wicked, and indignation because of the ungrateful, and jealousy because of
the proud, and whatsoever else is a hinderance to the evil. So, again,
mercy on account of the erring, and patience on account of the impenitent,
and pre-eminent resources(6) on account of the meritorious, and whatsoever
is necessary to the good. All these affections He is moved by in that
peculiar manner of His own, in which it is profoundly fit(7) that He should
be affected; and it is owing to Him that man is also similarly affected in
a way which is equally his own.

CHAP. XVII.--TRACE GOD'S GOVERNMENT IN HISTORY AND IN HIS PRECEPTS, AND YOU
WILL FIND IT FULL OF HIS GOODNESS.

   These considerations show that the entire order of God as Judge is an
operative one, and (that I may express myself in worthier words) protective
of His Catholic(8) and supreme goodness, which, removed as it is from
judiciary emotions, and pure in its own condition, the Marcionites refuse
to acknowledge to be in one and the same Deity, "raining on the just and on
the unjust, and making His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,"(9)--a
bounty which no other god at all exercises. It is true that Marcion has
been bold enough to erase from the gospel this testimony of Christ to the
Creator; but yet the world itself is inscribed with the goodness of its
Maker, and the inscription is read by each man's conscience. Nay, this very
long-suffering of the Creator will tend to the condemnation of Marcion;
that patience, (I mean,) which waits for the sinner's repentance rather
than his death, which prefers mercy to sacrifice,(10) averting from the
Ninevites the ruin which had been already denounced against them,(11) and
vouchsafing to Hezekiah's tears an extension of his life,(12) and restoring
his kingly state to the monarch of Babylon after his complete
repentance;(13) that mercy, too, which conceded to the devotion of the
people the son of Saul when about to die,(14) and gave free forgiveness to
David on his confessing his sins against the house of Uriah;(1) which also
restored the house of Israel as often as it condemned it, and addressed to
it consolation no less frequently than reproof. Do not therefore look at
God simply as Judge, but turn your attention also to examples of His
conduct as the Most Good.(2) Noting Him, as you do, when He takes
vengeance, consider Him likewise When He shows mercy.(3) In the scale,
against His severity place His gentleness. When you shall have discovered
both qualities to co-exist in the Creator, you will find in Him that very
circumstance which induces you to think there is another God. Lastly, come
and examine into His doctrine, discipline, precepts, and counsels. You will
perhaps say that there are equally good prescriptions in human laws. But
Moses and God existed before all your Lycurguses and Solons. There is not
one after-age(4) which does not take from primitive sources. At any rate,
my Creator did not learn from your God to issue such commandments as: Thou
shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou
shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not covet what is thy neighbour's;
honour thy father and thy mother; and, thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself. To these prime counsels of innocence, chastity, and justice, and
piety, are also added prescriptions of humanity, as when every seventh year
slaves are released for liberty;(5) when at the same period the land is
spared from tillage; a place is also granted to the needy; and from the
treading ox's mouth the muzzle is removed, for the enjoyment of the fruit
of his labour before him, in order that kindness first shown in the case of
animals might be raised from such rudiments(6) to the refreshment(7) of
men.

CHAP. XVIII.--SOME OF GOD'S LAWS DEFENDED AS GOOD, WHICH THE MARCIONITES
IMPEACHED, SUCH AS THE LEX TALIONIS. USEFUL PURPOSES IN A SOCIAL AND MORAL
POINT OF VIEW OF THIS, AND SUNDRY OTHER ENACTMENTS.

   But what parts of the law can I defend as good with a greater
confidence than those which heresy has shown such a longing for?--as the
statute of retaliation, requiring eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and stripe
for stripe.(8) Now there is not here any smack of a permission to mutual
injury; but rather, on the whole, a provision for restraining violence. To
a people which was very obdurate, and wanting in faith towards God, it
might seem tedious, and even incredible, to expect from God that vengeance
which was subsequently to be declared by the prophet: "Vengeance is mine; I
will repay, saith the Lord."(9) Therefore, in the meanwhile, the commission
of wrong was to be checked(10) by the fear of a retribution immediately to
happen; and so the permission of this retribution was to be the prohibition
of provocation, that a stop might thus be put to all hot-blooded(11)
injury, whilst by the permission of the second the first is prevented by
fear, and by this deterring of the first the second fails to be committed.
By the same law another result is also obtained,(12) even the more ready
kindling of the fear of retaliation by reason of the very savour of passion
which is in it. There is no more bitter thing, than to endure the very
suffering which you have inflicted upon others. When, again, the law took
somewhat away from men's food, by pronouncing unclean certain animals which
were once blessed, you should understand this to be a measure for
encouraging continence, and recognise in it a bridle imposed on that
appetite which, while eating angels' food, craved after the cucumbers and
melons of the Egyptians. Recognise also therein a precaution against those
companions of the appetite, even lust and luxury, which are usually chilled
by the chastening of the appetite.(13) For "the people sat down to eat and
to drink, and rose up to play."(14) Furthermore, that an eager wish for
money might be restrained, so far as it is caused by the need of food, the
desire for costly meat and drink was taken out of their power. Lastly, in
order that man might be more readily educated by God for fasting, he was
accustomed to such articles of food as were neither plentiful nor
sumptuous, and not likely to pamper the appetite of the luxurious. Of
course the Creator deserved all the greater blame, because it was from His
own people that He took away food, rather than from the more ungrateful
Marcionites. As for the burdensome sacrifices also, and the troublesome
scrupulousness of their ceremonies(15) and oblations, no one should blame
them, as if God specially required them for Himself: for He plainly asks,
"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?" and, "Who
hath required them at your hand?"(1) But he should see herein a careful
provision on God's part, which showed His wish to bind to His own religion
a people who were prone to idolatry and transgression by that kind of
services wherein consisted the superstition of that period; that He might
call them away therefrom, while requesting it to be performed to Himself,
as if He desired that no sin should be committed in making idols.

CHAP.XIX.--THE MINUTE PRESCRIPTIONS OF THE LAW MEANT TO KEEP THE PEOPLE
DEPENDENT ON GOD. THE PROPHETS SENT BY GOD IN PURSUANCE OF HIS GOODNESS.
MANY BEAUTIFUL PASSAGES FROM THEM QUOTED IN ILLUSTRATION OF THIS ATTRIBUTE.

   But even in the common transactions of life, and of human intercourse
at home and in public, even to the care of the smallest vessels, He in
every possible manner made distinct arrangement; in order that, when they
everywhere encountered these legal instructions, they might not be at any
moment out of the sight of God. For what could better tend to make a man
happy, than having "his delight in the law of the Lord?" "In that law would
he meditate day and night.(3) It was not in severity that its Author
promulgated this law, but in the interest of the highest benevolence, which
rather aimed at subduing(4) the nation's hardness of heart, and by
laborious services hewing out a fealty which was (as yet) untried in
obedience: for I purposely abstain from touching on the mysterious senses
of the law, considered in its spiritual and prophetic relation, and as
abounding in types of almost every variety and sort. It is enough at
present, that it simply bound a man to God, so that no one ought to find
fault with it, except him who does not choose to serve God. To help forward
this beneficent, not onerous, purpose of the law, the prophets were also
ordained by the self-same goodness of God, teaching precepts worthy of God,
how that men should "cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment,
judge the fatherless,(5) and plead for the widow:"(6) be fond of the divine
expostulations:(7) avoid contact with the wicked:(8) "let the oppressed go
free:"(9) dismiss the unjust sentence.(10) "deal their bread to the hungry;
bring the outcast into their house; cover the naked, when they see him; nor
hide themselves from their own flesh and kin:"(11) "keep their tongue from
evil, and their lips from speaking guile: depart from evil, and do good;
seek peace, and pursue it:"(12) be angry, and sin not; that is, not
persevere in anger, or be enraged:(13) "walk not in the counsel of the
ungodly; nor stand in the way of sinners; nor sit in the seat of the
scornful."(14) Where then? "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for
brethren to dwell together in unity;"(15) meditating (as they do) day and
night in the law of the Lord, because "it is better to trust in the Lord
than to put confidence in man; better to hope in the Lord than in man."(16)
For what recompense shall man receive from God? "He shall be like a tree
planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his
season; his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall
prosper."(17) "He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not
taken God's name in vain, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour, he shall
receive blessing from the Lord, and mercy from the God of his
salvation."(18) "For the eyes of the Lord are upon them that fear Him, upon
them that hope in His mercy, to deliver their souls from death," even
eternal death, "and to nourish them in their hunger," that is, after
eternal life.(19) "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord
delivereth them out of them all."(20) "Precious in the sight of the Lord is
the death of His saints."(21) "The Lord keepeth all their bones; not one of
them shall be broken."(22) The Lord will redeem the souls of His
servants.(23) We have adduced these few quotations from a mass of the
Creator's Scriptures; and no more, I suppose, are wanted to prove Him to be
a most good God, for they sufficiently indicate both the precepts of His
goodness and the first-fruits(24) thereof.

CHAP. XX.--THE MARCIONITES CHARGED GOD WITH HAVING INSTIGATED THE HEBREWS
TO SPOIL THE EGYPTIANS. DEFENCE OF THE DIVINE DISPENSATION IN THAT MATTER.

   But these "saucy cuttles"(25) (of heretics) under the figure of whom
the law about things to be eaten(1) prohibited this very kind of piscatory
ailment, as soon as they find themselves confuted, eject the black venom of
their blasphemy, and so spread about in all directions the object which (as
is now plain) they severally have in view, when they put forth such
assertions and protestations as shall obscure and tarnish the rekindled
light(2) of the Creator's bounty. We will, however, follow their wicked
design, even through these black clouds, and drag to light their tricks of
dark calumny, laying to the Creator's charge with especial emphasis the
fraud and theft of gold and silver which the Hebrews were commanded by Him
to practise against the Egyptians. Come, unhappy heretic, I cite even you
as a witness; first look at the case of the two nations, and then you will
form a judgment of the Author of the command. The Egyptians put in a claim
on the Hebrews for these gold and silver vessels.(3) The Hebrews assert a
counter claim, alleging that by the bond(4) of their respective fathers,
attested by the written engagement of both parties, there were due to them
the arrears of that laborious slavery of theirs, for the bricks they had so
painfully made, and the cities and palaces s which they had built. What
shall be your verdict,you discoverer(6) of the most good God? That the
Hebrews must admit the fraud, or the Egyptians the compensation? For they
maintain that thus has the question been settled by the advocates on both
sides,(7) of the Egyptians demanding their vessels, and the Hebrews
claiming the requital of their labours. But for all they say,(8) the
Egyptians justly renounced their restitution-claim then and there; while
the Hebrews to this day, in spite of the Marcionites, re-assert their
demand for even greater damages,(9) insisting that, however large was their
loan of the gold and silver, it would not be compensation enough, even if
the labour of six hundred thousand men should be valued at only "a
farthing"(10) a day a piece. Which, however, were the more in number--those
who claimed the vessel, or those who dwelt in the palaces and cities?
Which, too, the greater--the grievance of the Egyptians against the
Hebrews, or "the favour"(11) which they displayed towards them? Were free
men reduced to servile labour, in order that the Hebrews might simply
proceed against the Egyptians by action at law for injuries; or in order
that their officers might on their benches sit and exhibit their backs and
shoulders shamefully mangled by the fierce application of the scourge? It
was not by a few plates and cup--in all cases the property, no doubt, of
still fewer rich men--that any one would pronounce that compensation should
have been awarded to the Hebrews, but both by all the resources of these
and by the contributions of all the people.(12) If, therefore, the case of
the Hebrews be a good one, the Creator's case must likewise be a good one;
that is to say, his command, when He both made the Egyptians unconsciously
grateful, and also gave His own people their discharge in full(13) at the
time of their migration by the scanty comfort of a tacit requital of their
long servitude. It was plainly less than their due which He commanded to be
exacted. The Egyptians ought to have given back their men-children(14) also
to the Hebrews.

CHAP. XXI.--THE LAW OF THE SABBATH-DAY EXPLAINED. THE EIGHT DAYS'
PROCESSION AROUND JERICHO. THE GATHERING OF STICKS A VIOLATION.

   Similarly on other points also, you reproach Him with fickleness and
instability for contradictions in His commandments, such as that He forbade
work to be done on Sabbath-days, and yet at the siege of Jericho ordered
the ark to be carried round the walls during eight days; in other words, of
course, actually on a Sabbath. You do not, however, consider the law of the
Sabbath: they are human works, not divine, which it prohibits.(15) For it
says, "Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day
is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work." What
work? Of course your own. The conclusion is, that from the Sabbath-day He
removes those works which He had before enjoined for the six days, that is,
your own works; in other words, human works of daily life. Now, the
carrying around of the ark is evidently not an ordinary daily duty, nor yet
a human one; but a rare and a sacred work, and, as being then ordered by
the direct precept of God, a divine one. And t might fully explain what
this signified, were it not a tedious process to open out the forms(1) of
all the Creator's proofs, which you would, moreover, probably refuse to
allow. It is more to the point, if you be confuted on plain matters(2) by
the simplicity of truth rather than curious reasoning. Thus, in the present
instance, there is a clear distinction respecting the Sabbath's prohibition
of human labours, not divine ones. Accordingly, the man who went and
gathered sticks on the Sabbath-day was punished with death. For it was his
own work which he did; and this(3) the law forbade. They, however, who on
the Sabbath carried the ark round Jericho, did it with impunity. For it was
not their own work, but God's, which they executed, and that too, from His
express commandment.

CHAP. XXII.--THE BRAZEN SERPENT AND THE GOLDEN CHERUBIM WERE NOT VIOLATIONS
OF THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. THEIR MEANING.

   Likewise, when forbidding the similitude to be made of all things which
are in heaven, and in earth, and in the waters, He declared also the
reasons, as being prohibitory of all material exhibition(4) of a latent(5)
idolatry. For He adds: "Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them."
The form, however, of the brazen serpent which the Lord afterwards
commanded Moses to make, afforded no pretext(6) for idolatry, but was meant
for the cure of those who were plagued with the fiery serpents? I say
nothing of what was figured by this cure.(8) Thus, too, the golden Cherubim
and Seraphim were purely an ornament in the figured fashion(9) of the ark;
adapted to ornamentation for reasons totally remote from all condition of
idolatry, on account of which the making a likeness is prohibited; and they
are evidently not at variance with(10) this law of prohibition, because
they are not found in that form(11) of similitude, in reference to which
the prohibition is given. We have spoken(12) of the rational institution of
the sacrifices, as calling off their homage from idols to God; and if He
afterwards rejected this homage, saying, "To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me?"(13)--He meant nothing else than this to be
understood, that He had never really required such homage for Himself. For
He says, "I will not eat the flesh of bulls;"(14) and in another passage:
"The everlasting God shall neither hunger nor thirst."(15) Although He had
respect to the offerings of Abel, and smelled a sweet savour from the
holocaust of Noah, yet what pleasure could He receive from the flesh of
sheep, or the odour of burning victims? And yet the simple and God-fearing
mind of those who offered what they were receiving from God, both in the
way of food and of a sweet smell, was favourably accepted before God, in
the sense of respectful homage(16) to God, who did not so much want what
was offered, as that which prompted the offering. Suppose now, that some
dependant were to offer to a rich man or a king, who was in want of
nothing, some very insignificant gift, will the amount and quality of the
gift bring dishonour(17) to the rich man and the king; or will the
consideration(18) of the homage give them pleasure? Were, however, the
dependant, either of his own accord or even in compliance with a command,
to present to him gifts suitably to his rank, and were he to observe the
solemnities due to a king, only without faith and purity of heart, and
without any readiness for other acts of obedience, will not that king or
rich man consequently exclaim: "To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices unto me? I am full of your solemnities, your feast-days, and
your Sabbaths."(19) By calling them yours, as having been performed(20)
after the giver's own will, and not according to the religion of God (since
he displayed them as his own, and not as God's), the Almighty in this
passage, demonstrated how suitable to the conditions of the case, and how
reasonable, was His rejection of those very offerings which He had
commanded to be made to Him.

CHAP. XXIII.--GOD'S PURPOSES IN ELECTION AND REJECTION OF THE SAME MEN,
SUCH AS KING SAUL, EXPLAINED, IN ANSWER TO THE MARCIONITE CAVIL.

   Now, although you will have it that He is inconstant(1) in respect of
persons, sometimes disapproving where approbation is deserved; or else
wanting in foresight, bestowing approbation on men who ought rather to be
reprobated, as if He either censured(2) His own past judgments, or could
not forecast His future ones; yet s nothing is so consistent for even a
good judge(4) as both to reject and to choose on the merits of the present
moment. Saul is chosen,(5) but he is not yet the despiser of the prophet
Samuel.(6) Solomon is rejected; but he is now become a prey to foreign
women, and a slave to the idols of Moab and Sidon. What must the Creator
do, in order to escape the censure of the Marcionites? Must He prematurely
condemn men, who are thus far correct in their conduct, because of future
delinquencies? But it is not the mark of a good God to condemn beforehand
persons who have not yet deserved condemnation. Must He then refuse to
eject sinners, on account of their previous good deeds? But it is not the
characteristic of a just judge to forgive sins in consideration of former
virtues which are no longer practised. Now, who is so faultless among men,
that God could always have him in His choice, and never be able to reject
him? Or who, on the other hand, is so void of any good work, that God could
reject him for ever, and never be able to choose him? Show me, then, the
man who is always good, and he will not be rejected; show me, too, him who
is always evil, and he will never be chosen. Should, however, the same man,
being found on different occasions in the pursuit of both (good and evil)
be recompensed(7) in both directions by God, who is both a good and
judicial Being, He does not change His judgments through inconstancy or
want of foresight, but dispenses reward according to the deserts of each
case with a most unwavering and provident decision.(8)

CHAP. XXIV.--INSTANCES OF GOD'S REPENTANCE, AND NOTABLY IN THE CASE OF THE
NINEVITES, ACCOUNTED FOR AND VINDICATED.

   Furthermore, with respect to the repentance which occurs in His
conduct?(9) you interpret it with similar perverseness just as if it were
with fickleness and improvidence that He repented, or on the recollection
of some wrong-doing; because He actually said, "It repenteth me that I have
set up Saul to be king,(10) "very much as if He meant that His repentance
savoured of an acknowledgment of some evil work or error. Well,(11) this is
not always implied. For there occurs even in good works a confession of
repentance, as a reproach and condemnation of the man who has proved
himself unthankful for a benefit. For instance, in this case of Saul, the
Creator, who had made no mistake in selecting him for the kingdom, and
endowing him with His Holy Spirit, makes a statement respecting the
goodliness of his person, how that He had most fitly chosen him as being at
that moment the choicest man, so that (as He says) there was not his fellow
among the children of Israel.(12) Neither was He ignorant how he would
afterwards turn out. For no one would bear you out in imputing lack of
foresight to that God whom, since you do not deny Him to be divine, you
allow to be also foreseeing; for this proper attribute of divinity exists
in Him. However, He did, as I have said, burden(13) the guilt of Saul with
the confession of His own repentance; but as there is an absence of all
error and wrong in His choice of Saul, it follows that this repentance is
to be understood as upbraiding another(14) rather than as self-
incriminating.(15) Look here then, say you: I discover a self-incriminating
case in the matter of the Ninevites, when the book of Jonah declares, "And
God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and
He did it not."(16) In accordance with which Jonah himself says unto the
Lord, "Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a
gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and
repentest Thee of the evil."(17) It is well, therefore, that he premised
the attribute(18) of the most good God as most patient over the wicked, and
most abundant in mercy and kindness over such as acknowledged and bewailed
their sins, as the Ninevites were then doing. For if He who has this
attribute is the Most Good, you will have first to relinquish that position
of yours, that the very contact with(19) evil is incompatible with such a
Being, that is, with the most good God. And because Marcion, too, maintains
that a good tree ought not to produce bad fruit; but yet he has mentioned
"evil" (in the passage under discussion), which the most good God is
incapable of,(1) is there forthcoming any explanation of these "evils,"
which may render them compatible with even the most Good? There is, We say,
in short, that evil in the present case(2) means, not what may be
attributed to the Creator's nature as an evil being, but what may be
attributed to His power as a judge. In accordance with which He declared,
"I create evil,"(3) and, "I frame evil against you;"(4) meaning not to
sinful evils, but avenging ones. What sort of stigmas pertains to these,
congruous as they are with God's judicial character, we have sufficiently
explained.(6) Now although these are called "evils," they are yet not
reprehensible in a judge; nor because of this their name do they show that
the judge is evil: so in like manner will this particular evil(7) be
understood to be one of this class of judiciary evils, and along with them
to be compatible with (God as) a judge. The Greeks also sometimes(8) use
the word "evils" for troubles and injuries (not malignant ones), as in this
passage of yours(9) is also meant. Therefore, if the Creator repented of
such evil as this, as showing that the creature deserve dcondemnation, and
ought to be punished for his sin, then, in(10) the present instance no
fault of a criminating nature will be imputed to the Creator, for having
deservedly and worthily decreed the destruction of a city so full of
iniquity. What therefore He had justly decreed, having no evil purpose in
His decree, He decreed from the principle of justice,(11) not from
malevolence. Yet He gave it the name of "evil," because of the evil and
desert involved in the very suffering itself. Then, you will say, if you
excuse the evil under name of justice, on the ground that He had justly
determined destruction against the people of Nineveh, He must even on this
argument be blameworthy, for having repented of an act of justice, which
surely should not be repented of. Certainly not,(12) my reply is; God will
never repent of an act of justice. And it now remains that we should
understand what God's repentance means. For although man repents most
frequently on the recollection of a sin, and occasionally even from the
unpleasantness(13) of some good action, this is never the case with God.
For, inasmuch as God neither commits sin nor condemns a good action, in so
far is there no room in Him for repentance of either a good or an evil
deed. Now this point is determined for you even in the scripture which we
have quoted. Samuel says to Saul, "The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel
from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine that is
better than thou;"(14) and into two parts shall Israel be divided: "for He
will not turn Himself, nor repent; for He does not repent as a man
does."(15) According, therefore, to this definition, the divine repentance
takes in all cases a different form from that of man, in that it is never
regarded as the result of improvidence or of fickleness, or of any
condemnation of a good or an evil work. What, then, will be the mode of
God's repentance? It is already quite clear,(16) if you avoid referring it
to human conditions. For it will have no other meaning than a simple change
of a prior purpose; and this is admissible without any blame even in a man,
much more(17) in God, whose every purpose is faultless. Now in Greek the
word for repentance (meta'noia) is formed, not from the confession of a
sin, but from a change of mind, which in God we have shown to be regulated
by the occurrence of varying circumstances.

CHAP. XXV.--GOD'S DEALINGS WITH ADAM AT THE FALL, AND WITH CAIN AFTER HIS
CRIME, ADMIRABLY EXPLAINED AND DEFENDED.

   It is now high time that I should, in order to meet all(18) objections
of this kind, proceed to the explanation and clearing up(19) of the other
trifles,(20) weak points, and inconsistencies, as you deemed them. God
calls out to Adam,(21) Where art thou? as if ignorant where he was; and
when he alleged that the shame of his nakedness was the cause (of his
hiding himself), He inquired whether he had eaten of the tree, as if He
were in doubt. By no means;(22) God was neither uncertain about the
commission of the sin, nor ignorant of Adam's whereabouts. It was certainly
proper to summon the offender, who was concealing himself from the
consciousness of his sin, and to bring him forth into the presence of his
Lord, not merely by the calling out of his name, but with a home-thrust
blow(1) at the sin which he had at that moment committed. For the question
ought not to be read in a merely interrogative tone, Where art thou, Adam?
but with an impressive and earnest voice, and with an air of imputation,
Oh, Adam, where art thou?--as much as to intimate: thou art no longer here,
thou art in perdition--so that the voice is the utterance of One who is at
once rebuking and sorrowing.(2) But of course some part of paradise had
escaped the eye of Him who holds the universe in His hand as if it were a
bird's nest, and to whom heaven is a throne and earth a footstool; so that
He could not see, before He summoned him forth, where Adam was, both while
lurking and when eating of the forbidden fruit! The wolf or the paltry
thief escapes not the notice of the keeper of your vineyard or your garden!
And God, I suppose, with His keener vision,(3) from on high was unable to
miss the sight of(4) aught which lay beneath Him! Foolish heretic, who
treat with scorn(5) so fine an argument of God's greatness and man's
instruction! God put the question with an appearance of uncertainty, in
order that even here He might prove man to be the subject of a free will in
the alternative of either a denial or a confession, and give to him the
opportunity of freely ackowledging his transgression, and, so far,(6) of
lightening it.(7) In like manner He inquires of Cain where his brother was,
just as if He had not yet heard the blood of Abel crying from the ground,
in order that he too might have the opportunity from the same power of the
will of spontaneously denying, and to this degree aggravating, his crime;
and that thus there might be supplied to us examples of confessing sins
rather than of denying them: so that even then was initiated the evangelic
doctrine, "By thy words(8) thou shall be justified, and by thy words thou
shalt be condemned."(9) Now, although Adam was by reason of his condition
under law(10) subject to death, yet was hope preserved to him by the Lord's
saying, "Behold, Adam is become as one of us;"(11) that is, in consequence
of the future taking of the man into the divine nature. Then what follows?
"And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life,
(and eat), and live for ever." Inserting thus the particle of present time,
"And now," He shows that He had made for a time, and at present, a
prolongation of man's life. Therefore He did not actually(12) curse  Adam
and Eve, for they were candidates for restoration, and they had been
relieved(13) by confession. Cain, however, He not only cursed; but when he
wished to atone for his sin by death, He even prohibited his dying, so that
he had to bear the load of this prohibition in addition to his crime. This,
then, will prove to be the ignorance of our God, which was simulated on
this account, that delinquent man should not be unaware of what he ought to
do. Coming down to the case of Sodom and Gomorrha, he says: "I will go down
now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it
which is come unto me; and if not, I will know."(14) Well, was He in this
instance also uncertain through ignorance, and desiring to know? Or was
this a necessary tone of utterance, as expressive of a minatory and not a
dubious sense, under the colour of an inquiry?  If you make merry at God's
"going down," as if He could not except by the descent have accomplished
His judgment, take care that you do not strike your own God with as hard a
blow. For He also came down to accomplish what He wished.

CHAP. XXVI.--THE OATH OF GOD: ITS MEANING. MOSES, WHEN DEPRECATING GOD'S
WRATH AGAINST ISRAEL, A TYPE OF CHRIST.

   But God also swears. Well, is it,I wonder, by the God of Marcion?
No,no, he says; a much vainer oath--by Himself!(15) What was He to do, when
He knew(16) of no other God; especially when He was swearing to this very
point, that besides himself there was absolutely no God? Is it then of
swearing falsely that you convict(17) Him, or of swearing a vain oath? But
it is not possible for him to appear to have sworn falsely, when he was
ignorant, as you say he was, that there was another God. For when he swore
by that which he knew, he really committed no perjury. But it was not a
vain oath for him to swear that there was no other God. It would indeed be
a vain oath, if there had been no persons who believed that there were
other Gods, like the worshippers of idols then, and the heretics of the
present day. Therefore He swears by Himself, in order that you may believe
God, even when He swears that there is besides Himself no other God at all.
But you have yourself, O Marcion, compelled God to do this. For even so
early as then were you foreseen. Hence, if He swears both in His promises
and His threatenings, and thus extorts(1) faith which at first was
difficult, nothing is unworthy of God which causes men to believe in God.
But (you say) God was even then mean(2) enough in His very fierceness,
when, in His wrath against the people for their consecration of the calf,
He  makes this request of His servant Moses:  "Let me alone, that my wrath
may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them; and I will make of
thee a great nation."(3) Accordingly, you maintain that Moses is better
than his God, as the deprecator, nay the averter, of His anger. "For," said
he, "Thou shall not do this; or else destroy me along with them."(4)
Pitiable are ye also, as well as the people, since you know not Christ,
prefigured in the person of Moses as the deprecator of the Father, and the
offerer of His own life for the salvation of the people. It is enough,
however, that the nation was at the instant really given to Moses. That
which he, as a servant, was able to ask of the Lord, the Lord required of
Himself. For this purpose did He say to His servant, "Let me alone, that I
may consume them," in order that by his entreaty, and by offering himself,
he might hinder(5) (the threatened judgment), and that you might by such an
Instance learn how much privilege is vouch-safed(6) with God to a faithful
man and a prophet.

CHAP. XXVII.--OTHER OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. GOD'S CONDESCENSION IN THE
INCARNATION NOTHING DEROGATORY TO THE DIVINE BEING IN THIS ECONOMY.    THE
DIVINE MAJESTY WORTHILY SUSTAINED BY THE ALMIGHTY FATHER, NEVER VISIBLE TO
MAN. PERVERSENESS OF THE MARCIONITE CAVILS.

   And now, that I may briefly pass in review(7) the other points which
you have thus far been engaged in collecting, as mean, weak, and unworthy,
for demolishing(8) the Creator, I will propound them in a simple and
definite statement:(9) that God would have been unable to hold any
intercourse with men, if He had not taken on Himself the emotions and
affections of man, by means of which He could temper the strength of His
majesty, which would no doubt have been incapable of endurance to the
moderate capacity of man, by such a humiliation as was indeed degrading(10)
to Himself, but necessary for man, and such as on this very account became
worthy of God, because nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man.
If I were arguing with heathens, I should dwell more at length on this
point; although with heretics too the discussion does not stand on very
different grounds. Inasmuch as ye yourselves have now come to the belief
that God moved about(11) in the form and all other circumstances of man's
nature,(12) you will of course no longer require to be convinced that God
conformed Himself to humanity, but feel yourselves bound by your own faith.
For if the God (in whom ye believe,) even from His higher condition,
prostrated the supreme dignity of His majesty to such a lowliness as to
undergo death, even the death of the cross, why can you not suppose that
some humiliations(13) are becoming to our God also, only more tolerable
than Jewish contumelies, and crosses,(14) and sepulchres? Are these the
humiliations which henceforth are to raise a prejudice against Christ (the
subject as He is of human passions(15)) being a partaker of that
Godhead(16) against which you make the participation in human qualities a
reproach? Now we believe that Christ did ever act in the name of God the
Father; that He actually(17) from the beginning held intercourse with
(men); actually(18) communed with(19) patriarchs and prophets; was the Son
of the Creator; was His Word; whom God made His Son(20) by emitting Him
from His own self,(21) and thenceforth set Him over every dispensation and
(administration of) His will,(22) making Him a little lower than the
angels, as is written in David.(23) In which lowering of His condition He
received from the Father a dispensation in those very respects which you
blame as human; from the very beginning learning,(24) even then, (that
state of a) man which He was destined in the end to become.(25) It is He
who descends, He who interrogates, He who demands, He who swears. With
regard, however, to the Father, the very gospel which is common to us will
testify that He was never visible, according to the word of Christ: "No man
knoweth the Father, save the Son."(1) For even in the Old Testament He had
declared, "No man shall see me, and live."(2) He means that the Father is
invisible, in whose authority and in whose name was He God who appeared as
the Son of God. But with us(3) Christ is received in the person of Christ,
because even in this manner is He our God. Whatever attributes therefore
you require as worthy of God, must be found in the Father, who is invisible
and unapproachable, and placid, and (so to speak) the God of the
philosophers; whereas those qualities which you censure as unworthy must be
supposed to be in the Son, who has been seen, and heard, and encountered,
the Witness and Servant of the Father, uniting in Himself man and God, God
in mighty deeds, in weak ones man, in order that He may give to man as much
as He takes from God. What in your esteem is the entire disgrace of my God,
Is in fact the sacrament of man's salvation God held converse with man,
that man might learn to act as God. God dealt on equal terms(4) with man,
that man might be able to deal on equal terms with God. God was found
little, that man might become very great. You who disdain such a God, I
hardly know whether you ex fide believe that God was crucified. How great,
then, is your perversity in respect of the two characters of the Creator!
You designate Him as Judge, and reprobate as Cruelty that severity of the
Judge which only acts in accord with the merits of cases. You require God
to be very good, and yet despise as meanness that gentleness of His which
accorded with His kindness, (and) held lowly converse in proportion to the
mediocrity of man's estate. He pleases you not, whether great or little,
neither as your judge nor as your friend !What if the same features should
be discovered in your God? That He too is a judge, we have already shown in
the proper section:(5) that from being a judge He must needs be severe; and
from being severe He must also be cruel, if indeed cruel.(6)

CHAP. XXVIII.--THE TABLES TURNED UPON MARCION, BY CONTRASTS, IN FAVOUR OF
THE TRUE GOD.

   Now, touching the weaknesses and malignities, and the other (alleged),
notes (of the Creator), I too shall advance antitheses in rivalry to
Marcion's. If my God knew not of any other superior to Himself, your god
also was utterly unaware that there was any beneath himself. It is just
what Heraclitus "the obscure"(7) said; whether it be up or down,(8) it
comes to the same thing. If, indeed, he was not ignorant (of his position),
it  must have occurred to Him from the beginning. Sin and death, and the
author of sin too--the devil--and all the evil which my God permitted to
be, this also, did your god permit; for he allowed Him to permit it. Our
God changed His purposes;(9) in like manner yours did also. For he who cast
his look so late in the human race, changed that purpose, which for so long
a period had refused to cast that look. Our God repented Him of the evil in
a given case; so also did yours. For by the fact that he at last had regard
to the salvation of man, he showed such a repentance of his previous
disregard(10) as was due for a wrong deed. But neglect of man's salvation
will be accounted a wrong deed, simply because it has been remedied(11) by
his repentance in the conduct of your god. Our God you say commanded a
fraudulent act, but in a matter of gold and silver. Now, inasmuch as man is
more precious than gold and silver, in so far is your god more fraudulent
still, because he robs man of his Lord and Creator. Eye for eye does our
God require; but your god does even a greater injury, (in your ideas,) when
he prevents an act of retaliation. For what man will not return a blow,
without waiting to be struck a second time.(12) Our God (you say) knows not
whom He ought to choose. Nor does your god, for if he had foreknown the
issue, he would not have chosen the traitor Judas. If you allege that the
Creator practised deception(1) in any instance, there was a far greater
mendacity in your Christ, whose very body was unreal.(2) Many were consumed
by the severity of my God. Those also who were not saved by your god are
verily disposed by him to ruin. My God ordered a man to be slain. Your god
willed himself to be put to death; not less a homicide against himself than
in respect of him by whom he meant to be slain. I will moreover prove to
Marcion that they were many who were slain by his god; for he made every
one a homicide: in other words, he doomed him to perish, except when people
failed in no duty towards Christ.(3) But the straightforward virtue of
truth is contented with few resources.(4) Many things will be necessary for
falsehood.

CHAP. XXIX.--MARCION'S OWN ANTITHESES, IF ONLY THE TITLE AND OBJECT OF THE
WORK BE EXCEPTED, AFFORD PROOFS OF THE CONSISTENT ATTRIBUTES OF THE TRUE
GOD.

   But I would have attacked Marcion's own Antitheses in closer and fuller
combat, if a more elaborate demolition of them were required in maintaining
for the Creator the character of a good God and a Judge, alters the
examples of both points, which we have shown to be so worthy of God. Since,
however, these two attributes of goodness and justice do together make up
the proper fulness of the Divine Being as omnipotent, I am able to content
myself with having now compendiously refuted his Antitheses, which aim at
drawing distinctions out of the qualities of the (Creator's) artifices,(6)
or of His laws, or of His great works; and thus sundering Christ from the
Creator, as the most Good from the Judge, as One who is merciful from Him
who is ruthless, and One who brings salvation from Him who causes ruin. The
truth is,(7) they(8) rather unite the two Beings whom they arrange in those
diversities (of attribute), which yet are compatible in God. For only take
away the title of Marcion's book,(9) and the intention and purpose of the
work itself, and you could get no better demonstration that the self-same
God was both very good and a Judge, inasmuch as these two characters are
only competently found in God. Indeed, the very effort which is made in the
selected examples to oppose Christ to the Creator, conduces all the more to
their union. For so entirely one and the same was the nature of the Divine
Beings, the good and the severe, as shown both by the same examples and in
similar proofs, that It willed to display Its goodness to those on whom It
had first inflicted Its severity. The difference in time was no matter of
surprise, when the same God was afterwards merciful in presence of evils
which had been subdued,(10) who had once been so austere whilst they were
as yet unsubdued. Thus, by help of the Antitheses, the dispensation of the
Creator can be more readily shown to have been reformed by Christ, rather
than destroyed;(11) restored, rather than abolished;(12) especially as you
sever your own god from everything like acrimonious conduct,(13) even from
all rivalry whatsoever with the Creator. Now, since this is the case, how
comes it to pass that the Antitheses demonstrate Him to have been the
Creator's rival in every disputed cause?(14) Well, even here, too, I will
allow that in these causes my God has been a jealous God, who has in His
own right taken especial care that all things done by Him should be in
their beginning of a robuster growth;(15) and this in the way of a good,
because rational(16) emulation, which tends to maturity. In this sense the
world itself will acknowledge His "antitheses," from the contrariety of its
own elements, although it has been regulated with the very highest
reason.(17) Wherefore, most thoughtless Marcion, it was your duty to have
shown that one (of the two Gods you teach) was a God of light, and the
other a God of darkness; and then you would have found it an easier   task
to persuade us that one was a God of goodness, the other a God of severity.
How ever, the "antithesis" (or variety of administration) will rightly be
His property, to whom  it actually belongs in (the government of) the
world.

THE FIVE BOOKS AGAINST MARCION.

BOOK  III.

WHEREIN CHRIST IS SHOWN TO BE THE SON OF GOD, WHO CREATED THE WORLD; TO
HAVE BEEN PREDICTED BY THE PROPHETS; TO HAVE TAKEN HUMAN FLESH LIKE OUR
OWN, BY A REAL INCARNATION.

CHAP. I.--INTRODUCTORY; A BRIEF STATEMENT OF THE PRECEDING ARGUMENT IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SUBJECT OF THIS BOOK.

   FOLLOWING the track of my original treatise, the loss of which we are
steadily proceeding(1) to restore, we come now, in the order of our
subject, to treat of Christ, although this be a work of supererogation,(2)
after the proof which we have gone through that there is but one only God.
For no doubt it has been already ruled with sufficient clearness, that
Christ must be regarded as pertaining to(3) no other God than the Creator,
when it has been determined that no other God but the Creator should be the
object of our faith. Him did Christ so expressly preach, whilst the
apostles one after the other also so clearly affirmed that Christ belonged
to(4) no other God than Him whom He Himself preached--that is, the Creator-
-that no mention of a second God (nor, accordingly, of a second Christ) was
ever agitated previous to Marcion's scandal. This is most easily proved by
an examination(5) of both the apostolic and the heretical churches,(6) from
which we are forced to declare that there is undoubtedly a subversion of
the rule (of faith), where any opinion is found of later date,(7)--a point
which I have inserted in my first book.(8) A discussion of it would
unquestionably be of value even now, when we are about to make a separate
examination into (the subject of) Christ; because, whilst proving Christ to
be the Creator's Son, we are effectually shutting out the God of Marcion.
Truth should employ all her available resources, and in no limping way.(9)
In our compendious rules of faith, however, she has it all her own way.(10)
But I have resolved, like an earnest man,(11) to meet my adversary every
way and everywhere in the madness of his heresy, which is so great, that he
has found it easier to assume that that Christ has come who was never heard
of, than He who has always been predicted.

CHAP. II.--WHY CHRIST'S COMING SHOULD BE PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED.

   Coming then at once to the point,(12) I have to encounter the question,
Whether Christ ought to have come so suddenly?(13) (I answer, No.) First,
because He was the Son of God His Father. For this was a point of order,
that the Father should announce(14) the Son before the Son should the
Father, and that the Father should testify of the Son before the Son should
testify of the Father. Secondly, because, in addition to the title of Son,
He was the Sent. The authority,(15) therefore, of the Sender must needs
have first appeared in a testimony of the Sent; because none who comes in
the authority of another does himself set it forth(1) for himself on his
own assertion, but rather looks out for protection from it, for first comes
the support(2) of him who gives him his authority. Now (Christ) will
neither be acknowledged as Son if the Father never named Him, nor be
believed in as the Sent One if no Sender(3) gave Him a commission: the
Father, if any, purposely naming Him; and the Sender, if any, purposely
commissioning Him. Everything will be open to suspicion which transgresses
a rule. Now the primary order of all things will not allow that the Father
should come after the Son in recognition, or the Sender after the Sent, or
God after Christ. Nothing can take precedence of its own original in being
acknowledged, nor in like manner can it in its ordering.(4) Suddenly a Son,
suddenly Sent, and suddenly Christ! On the contrary, I should suppose that
from God nothing comes suddenly, because there is nothing which is not
ordered and arranged by God. And if ordered, why not also foretold, that it
may be proved to have been ordered by the prediction, and by the ordering
to be divine? And indeed so great a work, which (we may be sure) required
preparation,(5) as being for the salvation of man, could not have been on
that very account a sudden thing, because it was through faith that it was
to be of avail.(6) Inasmuch, then, as it had to be believed in order to be
of use, so far did it require, for the securing of this faith, a
preparation built upon the foundations of pro-arrangement and fore-
announcement. Faith, when informed by such a process, might justly be
required(7) of man by God, and by man be reposed in God; it being a duty,
after that knowledge(8) has made it a possibility, to believe those things
which a man had learned indeed to believe from the fore-announcement.(9)

CHAP. III.--MIRACLES ALONE, WITHOUT PROPHECY, AN INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE OF
CHRIST'S MISSION.

   A procedure(10) of this kind, you say, was not necessary, because He
was forthwith to prove Himself the Son and the Sent One, and the Christ of
God in very deed, by means of the evidence of His wonderful works.(11) On
my side, however, I have to deny that evidence simply of this sort was
sufficient as a testimony to Him. He Himself afterwards deprived it of its
authority,(12) because when He declared that many would come and "show
great signs and wonders,"(13) so as to turn aside the very elect, and yet
for all that were not to be received, He showed how rash was belief in
signs and wonders, which were so very easy of accomplishment by even false
christs. Else how happens it, if He meant Himself to be approved and
understood, and received on a certain evidence--I mean that of miracles--
that He forbade the recognition of those others who had the very same sort
of proof to show, and whose coming was to be quite as sudden and
unannounced by any authority?(14) If, because He came before them, and was
beforehand with them in displaying the signs of His mighty deeds, He
therefore seized the first right to men's faith,--just as the first  comers
do the first place in the baths,--and so forestalled all who came after Him
in that right, take care that He, too, be not caught in the condition of
the later comers, if He be found to be behindhand with the Creator, who had
already been made known, and had already worked miracles like Him,(15) and
like Him had forewarned men not to believe in others, even such as should
come after Him. If, therefore, to have been the first to come and utter
this warning, is to bar and limit faith,(16) He will Himself have to be
condemned, because He was later in being acknowledged; and authority to
prescribe such a rule about later comers will belong to the Creator alone,
who could have been posterior to none. And now, when I am about to prove
that the Creator sometimes displayed by His servants of old, and in other
cases reserved for His Christ to display, the self-same miracles which you
claim as solely due to faith in your Christ, I may fairly even from this
maintain that there was so much the greater reason wherefore Christ should
not be believed in simply on account of His miracles, inasmuch as these
would have shown Him to belong to none other (God) than the Creator,
because answering to the mighty deeds of the Creator, both as performed by
His servants and reserved for(17) His Christ; although, even if some other
proofs should be found in your Christ--new ones, to wit--we should more
readily believe that they, too, belong to the same God as do the old  ones,
rather than to him who has no other than new(1) proofs, such as are wanting
in the evidences of that antiquity which wins the assent of faith,(2) so
that even on this ground he ought to have come announced as much by
prophecies of his own building up faith in him, as by miracles, especially
in opposition to the Creator's Christ who was to come fortified by signs
and prophets of His own, in order that he might shine forth as the rival of
Christ by help of evidence of different kinds. But how was his Christ to be
foretold by a god who was himself never predicted? This, therefore, is the
unavoidable inference, that neither your god nor your Christ is an object
of faith, because God ought not to have been unknown, and Christ ought to
have been made known through God.(3)

CHAP. IV.--MARCION'S CHRIST NOT THE SUBJECT OF PROPHECY. THE ABSURD
CONSEQUENCES OF THIS  THEORY OF THE HERETIC.

   He(4) disdained, I suppose, to imitate the order of our God, as one who
was displeasing to him, and was by all means to be vanquished. He wished to
come, as a new being in a new way--a son previous to his father's
announcement, a sent one before the authority of the sender; so that he
might in person(5) propagate a most monstrous faith, whereby it should come
to be believed that Christ was come before it should be known that He had
an existence. It is here convenient to me to treat that other point: Why he
came not after Christ? For when I observe that, during so long a period,
his lord(6) bore with the greatest patience the very ruthless Creator who
was all the while announcing His Christ to men, I say, that whatever reason
impelled him to do so, postponing thereby his own revelation and
interposition, the self-same reason imposed on him the duty of bearing with
the Creator (who had also in His Christ dispensations of His own to carry
out); so that, after the completion and accomplishment of the entire plan
of the rival God and the rival Christ,(7) he might then superinduce his own
proper dispensation. But he grew weary of so long an endurance, and so
failed to wait till the end of the Creator's course. It was of no use, his
enduring that his Christ should be predicted, when he refused to permit him
to be manifested.(8) Either it was without just cause that he interrupted
the full course of his rival's time, or without just cause did he so long
refrain from interrupting it. What held him back at first? Or what
disturbed him at last? As the case now stands, however,(9) he has committed
himself in respect of both, having revealed himself so tardily after the
Creator, so hurriedly before His Christ; whereas he ought long ago to have
encountered the one with a confutation, the other to have forborne
encountering as yet--not to have borne with the one so long in His ruthless
hostility, nor to have disquieted the other, who was as yet quiescent! In
the case of both, while depriving them of their title to be considered the
most good God, he showed himself at least capricious and uncertain;
lukewarm (in his resentment) towards the Creator, but fervid against His
Christ, and powerless(10) in respect of them both! For he no more
restrained the Creator than he resisted His Christ. The Creator still
remains such as He really is. His Christ also will come,(11) just as it is
written of Him. Why did he(12) come after the Creator, since he was unable
to correct Him by punishment?(13) Why did he reveal himself before Christ,
whom he could not hinder from appearing?(14) If, on the contrary,(15) he
did chastise the Creator, he revealed himself, (I suppose,) after Him in
order that things which require correction might come first. On which
account also, (of course,) he ought to have waited for Christ to appear
first, whom he was going to chastise in like manner; then he would be His
punisher coming after Him,(16) just as he had been in the case of the
Creator. There is another consideration: since he will at his second advent
come after Him, that as he at His first coming took hostile proceed-rags
against the Creator, destroying the law and the prophets, which were His,
so he may, to be sure,(17) at his second coming proceed in opposition to
Christ, upsetting(18) His kingdom. Then, no doubt, he would terminate his
course, and then (if ever)(1) be worthy of belief; for else, if his work
has been already perfected, it would be in vain for him to come, for there
would indeed be nothing that he could further accomplish.

CHAP. V.--SUNDRY FEATURES OF THE PROPHETIC STYLE: PRINCIPLES OF ITS
INTERPRETATION.

   These preliminary remarks I have ventured to make(2) at this first step
of the discussion and while the conflict is, as it were, from a distance.
But inasmuch as I shall now from this point have to grapple with my
opponent on a distinct issue and in close combat, I perceive that I must
advance even here some lines, at which the battle will have to be
delivered; they are the Scriptures of the Creator. For as I shall have to
prove that Christ was from the Creator, according to these (Scriptures),
which were afterwards accomplished in the Creator's Christ, I find it
necessary to set forth the form and, so to speak, the nature of the
Scriptures themselves, that they may not distract the reader's attention by
being called into controversy at the moment of their application to
subjects of discussion, and by their proof being confounded with the proof
of the subjects themselves. Now there are two conditions of prophetic
announcement which I adduce, as requiring the assent of our adversaries in
the future stages of the discussion. One, that future events are sometimes
announced as if they were already passed. For it is(3) consistent with
Deity to regard as accomplished facts whatever It has determined on,
because there is no difference of time with that Being in whom eternity
itself directs a uniform condition of seasons. It is indeed more natural(4)
to the prophetic divination to represent as seen and already brought to
pass,(5) even while forseeing it, that which it foresees; in other words,
that which is by all means future. As for instance, in Isaiah: "I gave my
back to the smiters, and my cheeks (I exposed) to their hands. I hid not my
face from shame and spitting."(6) For whether it was Christ even then, as
we hold, or the prophet, as the Jews say, who pronounced these words
concerning himself, in either case, that which as yet had not happened
sounded as if it had been already accomplished. Another characteristic will
be, that very many events are figuratively predicted by means of enigmas
and allegories and parables, and that they must be understood in a sense
different from the literal description. For we both read Of "the mountains
dropping down new wine,"(7) but not as if one might expect "must" from the
stones, or its decoction from the rocks; and also hear of "a land flowing
with milk and honey,"(8) but not as if you were to suppose that you would
ever gather Samian cakes from the ground; nor does God, forsooth, offer His
services as a water-bailiff or a farmer when He says, "I will open rivers
in a land; I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the box-tree."(9)
In like manner, when, foretelling the conversion of the Gentiles, He  says,
"The beasts of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls," He
surely never meant to derive(10) His fortunate omens from the young of
birds and foxes, and from the songsters of marvel and fable. But why
enlarge on such a subject? When the very apostle whom our heretics
adopt,(11) interprets the law which allows an unmuzzled mouth to the oxen
that tread out the corn, not of cattle, but of ourselves;(12) and also
alleges that the rock which followed (the Israelites) and supplied them
with drink was Christ;(13) teaching the Galatians, moreover, that the two
narratives of the sons of Abraham had an allegorical meaning in their
course;(14) and to the Ephesians giving an intimation that, when it was
declared in the beginning that a man should leave his father and mother and
become one flesh with his wife, he applied this to Christ and the
church.(15)

CHAP. VI.--COMMUNITY IN CERTAIN POINTS OF MARCIONITE AND JEWISH ERROR.
PROPHECIES OF CHRIST'S REJECTION EXAMINED

   Since, therefore, there clearly exist these two characteristics in the
Jewish prophetic literature, let the reader remember,(16) whenever we
adduce any evidence therefrom, that, by mutual consent,(17) the point of
discussion is not the form of the scripture, but the subject it is called
in to prove. When, therefore, our heretics in their phrenzy presumed to say
that that Christ was come who had never been fore-announced, it followed
that, on their assumption, that Christ had not yet appeared who had always
been predicted; and thus they are obliged to make common cause with(1)
Jewish error, and construct their arguments with its assistance, on the
pretence that the Jews were themselves quite certain that it was some other
who came: so they not only rejected Him as a stranger, but slew Him as an
enemy, although they would without doubt have acknowledged Him, and with
all religious devotion followed Him, if He had only been one of themselves:
Our shipmaster(2) of course  got his craft-wisdom not from the Rhodian
law,(3) but from the Pontic,(4) which cautioned him against believing that
the Jews had no  right to sin against their Christ; whereas (even if
nothing like their conduct had been predicted against them) human nature
alone, liable to error as it is, might well have induced him to suppose
that it was quite possible for the Jews to have committed such a sin,
considered as men, without assuming any unfair prejudice regarding their
feelings, whose sin was antecedently so credible. Since, however, it was
actually foretold that they would   not acknowledge Christ, and therefore
would even put Him to death, it will therefore follow that He was both
ignored(5) and slain by them, who were beforehand pointed out as being
about to commit such offences against Him. If you require a proof of this,
instead of turning out those passages of Scripture which, while they
declare Christ to be capable of suffering death, do thereby also affirm the
possibility of His being rejected (for if He had not been rejected, He
could not really suffer anything), but rather reserving them for the
subject of His sufferings, I shall content myself at the present moment
with adducing those which simply show that there was a probability of
Christ's rejection. This is quickly done, since the passages indicate that
the entire power of understanding was by the Creator taken from the people.
"I will take away," says He, "the wisdom of their wise men; and the
understanding of their prudent men will I hide;"(6) and again: "With your
ear ye shall hear, and not understand; and with your eyes ye shall see, but
not perceive: for the heart of this people hath growth fat, and with their
ears they hear heavily, and their eyes have they shut; lest  they hear with
their ears, and see with their eyes, and understand with the heart, and be
converted, and I heal them."(7) Now this blunting of their sound senses
they had brought on themselves, loving God with their lips, but keeping far
away from Him in their heart. Since, then, Christ was announced by the
Creator, "who formeth the lightning, and createth the wind, and declareth
unto man His Christ," as the prophet Joel says,(8) since the entire hope of
the Jews, not to say of the Gentiles too, was fixed on the manifestation of
Christ,--it was demonstrated that they, by their being deprived of those
powers of knowledge and understanding--wisdom and prudence, would fail to
know and understand that which was predicted, even Christ; when the chief
of their wise men should be in error respecting Him--that is to say, their
scribes and prudent ones, or Pharisees; and when the people, like them,
should hear with their ears and not understand Christ while teaching them,
and see with their eyes and not perceive Christ, although giving them
signs. Similarly it is said elsewhere: "Who is blind, but my servant? or
deaf, but he who ruleth over them?"(9) Also when He upbraids them by the
same Isaiah: "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have
rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's
crib: but Israel doth not know; my people doth not consider."(10) We
indeed, who know for certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets, as
the Spirit of the Creator (for so says the prophet: "The person of our
Spirit, Christ the Lord,"(11) who from the beginning was both heard and
seen as the Father's vicegerent in the name of God), are well aware that
His words, when  actually upbraiding Israel, were the same as those which
it was foretold that He should denounce against him: "Ye have forsaken the
Lord, and have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger."(12) If, however,
you would rather refer to God Himself, instead of to Christ, the whole
imputation of Jewish ignorance from the first, through an unwillingness to
allow that even anciently(13) the Creator's word and Spirit--that is to
say, His Christ--was despised and not acknowledged by them, you will even
in this subterfuge be defeated. For when you do not deny that the Creator's
Son and Spirit and Substance is also His Christ, you must needs allow that
those who have not acknowledged the Father have failed likewise to
acknowledge the Son through the identity of their natural substance;(1) for
if in Its fulness It has baffled man's understanding, much more has a
portion of It, especially when partaking of the fulness(2) Now, when these
things are carefully considered, it becomes evident how the Jews both
rejected Christ and slew Him; not because they regarded Him as a strange
Christ, but because they did not acknowledge Him, although their own. For
how could they have understood the strange One, concerning whom nothing had
ever been announced, when they failed to understand Him about whom there
had been a perpetual course of prophecy? That admits of being understood or
being not understood, which, by possessing a substantial basis for
prophecy,(3) will also have a subject-matter(4) for either knowledge or
error; whilst that which lacks such matter admits not the issue of wisdom.
So that it was not as if He belonged to another(5) god that they conceived
an aversion for Christ, and persecuted Him, but simply as a man whom they
regarded as a wonder-working juggler,(6) and an enemy(7) in His doctrines.
They brought Him therefore to trial as a mere man, and one of themselves
too--that is, a Jew (only a renegade and a destroyer of Judaism)--and
punished Him according to their law. If He had been a stranger, indeed,
they would not have sat in judgment over Him. So far are they from
appearing to have understood Him to be a strange Christ, that they did not
even judge Him to be a stranger to their own human nature.(8)

CHAP. VII.--PROPHECY SETS FORTH TWO DIFFERENT CONDITIONS OF CHRIST, ONE
LOWLY, THE OTHER MAJESTIC. THIS FACT POINTS TO TWO ADVENTS OF CHRIST.

   Our heretic will now have the fullest opportunity of learning the
clue(9) of his errors along with the Jew himself, from whom he has borrowed
his guidance in this discussion. Since, however, the blind leads the blind,
they fall into the ditch together. We affirm that, as there are two
conditions demonstrated by the prophets to belong to Christ, so these
presignified the same number of advents; one, and that the first, was to be
in lowliness,(10) when He had to be led as a sheep to be slain as a victim,
and to be as a lamb dumb before the shearer, not opening His mouth, and not
fair to look upon.(11) For, says (the prophet), we have announced
concerning Him: "He is like a tender plant,(12) like a root out of a
thirsty ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; and we beheld Him, and He
was without beauty: His form was disfigured;"(13) "marred more than the
sons of men; a man stricken with sorrows, and knowing how to bear our
infirmity;"(14)   "placed by the Father as a stone of stumbling and a rock
of offence;"(15) "made by Him a little lower than the angels;"(16)
declaring Himself to be "a worm and not a man, a reproach of men, and
despised of the people."(17) Now these signs of degradation quite suit His
first coming, just as the tokens of His majesty do His second advent, when
He shall no longer remain "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence," but
after His rejection become "the chief corner-stone," accepted and elevated
to the top place(18) of the temple, even His church, being that very stone
in Daniel, cut out of the mountain, which was to smite and crush the image
of the secular kingdom.(19) Of this advent the same prophet says: "Behold,
one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the
Ancient of days; and they brought Him before Him, and there was given Him
dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages
should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not
pass away; and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."(20) Then
indeed He shall have both a glorious form, and an unsullied beauty above
the sons of men. "Thou art fairer," says (the Psalmist), "than the children
of men; grace is poured into Thy lips; therefore God hath blessed Thee for
ever. Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O most mighty, with Thy glory and Thy
majesty."(21) For the Father, after making Him a little lower than the
angels, "will crown Him with glory and honour, and put all things under His
feet."(22) "Then shall they look on Him whom they have pierced, and they
shall mourn for Him, tribe after tribe;"(1) because, no doubt, they once
refused to acknowledge Him in the lowliness of His human condition. He is
even a man says Jeremiah, and who shall recognise Him Therefore, asks
Isaiah, "who shall declare His generation?"(2) So also in Zechariah, Christ
Jesus, the true High Priest of the Father, in the person of Joshua, nay, in
the very mystery of His name,(3) is portrayed in a twofold dress with
reference to both His advents. At first He is clad in sordid garments, that
is to say, in the lowliness of suffering and mortal flesh: then the devil
resisted Him, as the instigator of the traitor Judas, not to mention his
tempting Him after His baptism: afterwards He was stripped of His first
filthy raiment, and adorned with the priestly robe(4) and mitre, and a pure
diadem;(5) in other words, with the glory and honour of His second
advent.(6) If I may offer, moreover, an interpretation of the two goats
which were presented on "the great day of atonement,"(7) do they not also
figure the two natures of Christ? They were of like size, and very similar
in appearance, owing to the Lord's identity of aspect; because He is not to
come in any other form, having to be recognised by those by whom He was
also wounded and pierced. One of these goats was bound(8) with scarlet,(9)
and driven by the people out of the camp(10) into the wilderness,(11) amid
cursing, and spitting, and pulling, and piercing,(12) being thus marked
with all the signs of the Lord's own passion; while the other, by being
offered up for sins, and given to the priests of the temple for meat,
afforded proofs of His second appearance, when (after all sins have been
expiated) the priests of the spiritual temple, that is, the church, are to
enjoy the flesh, as it were,(13) of the Lord's own grace, whilst the
residue go away from salvation without tasting it.(14) Since, therefore,
the first advent was prophetically declared both as most obscure in its
types, and as deformed with every kind of indignity, but the second as
glorious and altogether worthy of God, they would on this very account,
while confining their regards to that which they were easily able both to
understand and to believe, even the second advent, be not undeservedly
deceived respecting the more obscure, and, at any rate, the more lowly
first coming. Accordingly, to this day they deny that their Christ has
come, because He has not appeared in majesty, while they ignore the fact
that He was to come also in lowliness.

CHAP. VIII.--ABSURDITY OF MARCION'S DOCETIC OPINIONS; REALITY OF CHRIST'S
INCARNATION.

   Our heretic must now cease to borrow poison from the Jew--"the asp," as
the adage runs, "from the viper"(15)--and henceforth vomit forth the
virulence of his own disposition, as when he alleges Christ to be a
phantom. Except, indeed, that this opinion of his will be sure to have
others to maintain it in his precocious and somewhat abortive Marcionites,
whom the Apostle John designated as antichrists, when they denied that
Christ was come in the flesh; not that they did this with the view of
establishing the right of the other god (for on this point also they had
been branded by the same apostle), but because they had started with
assuming the incredibility of an incarnate God. Now, the  more firmly the
antichrist Marcion had seized this assumption, the more prepared was he, of
course, to reject the bodily substance of Christ, since he had introduced
his very god to our notice as neither the author nor the restorer of the
flesh; and for this very reason, to be sure, as pre-eminently good, and
most remote from the deceits and fallacies of the Creator. His Christ,
therefore, in order to avoid all such deceits and fallacies, and the
imputation, if possible, of belonging to the  Creator, was not what he
appeared to be, and reigned himself to be what he was not--incarnate
without being flesh, human without being man, and likewise a divine Christ
without being God! But why should he not have propagated also the phantom
of God? Can I believe him on the subject of the internal nature, who was
all wrong touching the external substance? How will it be possible to
believe him true on a mystery, when he has been found so false on a plain
fact? How, moreover, when he confounds the truth of the spirit with the
error of the flesh,(1) could he combine within himself that communion of
light and darkness, or truth and error, which the apostle says cannot co-
exist?(2) Since however, Christ's being flesh is now discovered to be a
lie, it follows that all things which were done by the flesh of Christ were
done untruly,(3)--every act of intercourse,(4) of contact, of eating or
drinking,(5) yea, His very miracles. If with a touch, or by being touched,
He freed any one of a disease, whatever was done by any corporeal act
cannot be believed to have been truly done in the absence of all reality in
His body itself. Nothing substantial can be allowed to have been effected
by an unsubstantial thing; nothing full by a vacuity. If the habit were
putative, the action was putative; if the worker were imaginary the works
were imaginary. On this principle, too, the sufferings of Christ will be
found not to warrant faith in Him. For He suffered nothing who did not
truly suffer; and a phantom could not truly suffer. God's entire work,
therefore, is subverted. Christ's death, wherein lies the whole weight and
fruit of the Christian name, is denied although the apostle asserts(6) it
so expressly(7) as undoubtedly real, making it the very foundation of the
gospel, of our salvation and of his own preaching.(8) "I have delivered
unto you before all things," says he, "how that Christ died for our sins,
and that he was buried, and that He rose again the third day." Besides, if
His flesh is denied, how is His death to be asserted; for death is the
proper suffering of the flesh, which returns through death back to the
earth out of which it was taken, according to the law of its Maker? Now, if
His death be denied, because of the denial of His flesh, there will be no
certainty of His resurrection. For He rose not, for the very same reason
that He died not, even because He possessed not the reality of the flesh,
to which as death accrues, so does resurrection likewise. Similarly, if
Christ's resurrection be nullified, ours also is destroyed. If Christ's
resurreetion be not realized,(9) neither shall that be for which Christ
came. For just as they, who said that there is no resurrection of the dead,
are refuted by the apostle from the resurrection of Christ, so, if the
resurrection of Christ falls to the ground, the resurrection of the dead is
also swept away.(10) And so our faith is vain, and vain also is the
preaching of the apostles. Moreover, they even show themselves to be false
witnesses of God, because they testified that He raised up Christ, whom He
did not raise. And we remain in our sins still.(11) And those who have
slept in Christ have perished; destined, forsooth,(12) to rise again, but
peradventure in a phantom state,(13) just like Christ.

CHAP. IX.--REFUTATION OF MARCION'S OBJECTIONS DERIVED FROM THE CASES OF THE
ANGELS, AND THE PRE-INCARNATE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SON OF GOD.

   Now, in this discussion of yours,(14) when you suppose that we are to
be met with the case of the Creator's angels, as if they held intercourse
with Abraham and Lot in a phantom state, that of merely putative flesh,(15)
and yet did truly converse, and eat, and work, as they had been
commissioned to do, you will not, to begin with, be permitted to use as
examples the acts of that God whom you are destroying. For by how much you
make your god a better and more perfect being, by just so much will all
examples be unsuitable to him of that God from whom he totally differs, and
without which difference he would not be at all better or more perfect. But
then, secondly, you must know that it will not be conceded to you, that in
the angels there was only a putative flesh, but one of a true and solid
human substance. For if (on your terms) it was no difficulty to him to
manifest true sensations and actions in a putative flesh, it was much more
easy for him still to have assigned the true substance of flesh to these
true sensations and actions, as the proper maker and former thereof. But
your god, perhaps on the ground of his having produced no flesh at all, was
quite right in introducing the mere phantom of that of which he had been
unable to produce the reality. My God, however, who formed that which He
had taken out of the dust of the ground in the true quality of flesh,
although not issuing as yet from conjugal seed, was equally able to apply
to angels too a flesh of any material whatsoever, who built even the world
out of nothing, into so many and so various bodies, and that at a word!
And, really, if your god promises to men some time or other the true nature
of angels(1) (for he says, "They shall be like the angels"), why should not
my God also have fitted on to angels the true substance of men, from
whatever source derived? For not even you will tell me, in reply, whence is
obtained that angelic nature on your side; so that it is enough for me to
define this as being fit and proper to God, even the verity of that thing
which was objective to three senses--sight, touch, and hearing. It is more
difficult for God to practise deception(2) than to produce real flesh from
any material whatever, even without the means of birth. But for other
heretics, also, who maintain that the flesh in the angels ought to have
been born of flesh, if it had been really human, we have an answer on a
sure principle, to the effect that it was truly human flesh, and yet not
born. It was truly human, because of the truthfulness of God, who can
neither lie nor deceive, and because (angelic beings) cannot be dealt with
by men in a human way except in human substance: it was withal unborn,
because none(3) but Christ could become incarnate by being born of the
flesh in order that by His own nativity He might regenerate(4) our birth,
and might further by His death also dissolve our death, by rising again in
that flesh in which, that He might even die, He was born. Therefore on that
occasion He did Himself appear with the angels to Abraham in the verity of
the flesh, which had not as yet undergone birth, because it was not yet
going to die, although it was even now learning to hold intercourse amongst
men. Still greater was the propriety in angels, who never received a
dispensation to die for us, not having assumed even a brief experience(5)
of flesh by being born, because they were not destined to lay it down again
by dying; but, from whatever quarter they obtained it, and by what means
soever they afterwards entirely divested themselves of it, they yet never
pretended it to be unreal flesh. Since the Creator "maketh His angels
spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire"--as truly spirits as also fire-
-so has He truly made them flesh likewise; wherefore we can now recall to
our own minds, and remind the heretics also, that He has promised that He
will one day form men into angels, who once formed angels into men.

CHAP. X.--THE TRULY INCARNATE STATE MORE WORTHY OF GOD THAN MARCION'S
FANTASTIC FLESH.

   Therefore, since you are not permitted to resort to any instances of
the Creator, as alien from the subject, and possessing special causes of
their own, I should like you to state yourself the design of your god, in
exhibiting his Christ not in the reality of flesh. If he despised it as
earthly, and (as you express it) full of dung,(6) why did he not on that
account include the likeness of it also in his contempt? For no honour is
to be attributed to the image of anything which is itself unworthy of
honour. As the natural state is, so will the likeness be. But how could he
hold converse with men except in the image of human substance?(7) Why,
then, not rather in the reality thereof, that his intercourse might be
real, since he was under the necessity of holding it? And to how much
better account would this necessity have been turned by ministering to
faith rather than to a fraud!(8) The god whom you make is miserable enough,
for this very reason that he was unable to display his Christ except in the
effigy of an unworthy, and indeed an alien, thing. In some instances, it
will be convenient to use even unworthy things, if they be only our own, as
it will also be quite improper to use things, be they ever so worthy, if
they be not our own.(9) Why, then, did he not come in some other worthier
substance, and especially his own, that he might not seem as if he could
not have done without an unworthy and an alien one? Now, since my Creator
held intercourse with man by means of even a bush and fire, and again
afterwards by means of a cloud and column,(10) and in representations of
Himself used bodies composed of the elements, these examples of divine
power afford sufficient proof that God did not require the instrumentality
of false or even of real flesh. But yet, if we look steadily into the
subject, there is really no substance which is worthy of becoming a
vestment for God. Whatsoever He is pleased to clothe Himself withal, He
makes worthy of Himself--only without untruth.(11) Therefore how comes it
to pass that he should have thought the verity of the flesh, rather than
its unreality, a disgrace? Well, but he honoured it by his fiction of it.
How great, then, is that flesh, the very phantasy of which was a necessity
to the superior God!

CHAP. XI.--CHRIST WAS TRULY BORN; MAR-CION'S ABSURD CAVIL IN DEFENCE OF A
PUTATIVE NATIVITY.

   All these illusions of an imaginary corporeity(1) in (his) Christ,
Marcion adopted with this view, that his nativity also might not be
furnished with any evidence from his human substance, and that thus the
Christ of the Creator might be free to have assigned to Him all predictions
which treated of Him as one capable of human birth, and therefore fleshly.
But most foolishly did our Pontic heresiarch act in this too. As if it
would not be more readily believed that flesh in the Divine Being should
rather be unborn than untrue, this belief having in fact had the way mainly
prepared for it by the Creator's angels when they conversed in flesh which
was real, although unborn. For indeed the notorious Philumena(2) persuaded
Apelles and the other seceders from Marcion rather to believe that Christ
did really carry about a body of flesh; not derived to Him, however, from
birth, but one which He borrowed from the elements. Now, as Marcion was
apprehensive that a belief of the fleshly body would also involve a belief
of birth, undoubtedly He who seemed to be man was believed to be verily and
indeed born. For a certain woman had exclaimed, "Blessed is the womb that
bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked!"(3) And how else could they
have said that His mother and His brethren were standing without?(4) But we
shall see more of this in the proper place.(5) Surely, when He also
proclaimed Himself as the Son of man, He, without doubt, confessed that He
had been born. Now I would rather refer all these points to an examination
of the gospel; but still, as I have already stated, if he, who seemed to be
man, had by all means to pass as having been born, it was vain for him to
suppose that faith in his nativity was to be perfected(6) by the device of
an imaginary flesh. For what advantage was there in that being not true
which was held to be true, whether it were his flesh or his birth? Or if
you should say, let human opinion go for nothing;(7) you are then honouring
your god under the shelter of a deception, since he knew himself to be
something different from what he had made men to think of him. In that case
you might possibly have assigned to him a putative nativity even, and so
not have hung the question on this point. For silly women fancy themselves
pregnant sometimes, when they are corpulent(8) either from their natural
flux(9) or from some other malady. And, no doubt, it had become his duty,
since he had put on the mere mask of his substance, to act out from its
earliest scene the play of his phantasy, lest he should have failed in his
part at the beginning of the flesh. You have, of course,(10) rejected the
sham of a nativity, and have produced true flesh itself. And, no   doubt,
even the real nativity of a God is a most mean thing.(11) Come then, wind
up your cavils(12) against the most sacred and reverend works of nature;
inveigh against all that you are; destroy the origin of flesh and life;
call the womb a sewer of the illustrious animal--in other words, the
manufactory for the production of man; dilate on the impure and shameful
tortures of parturition, and then on the filthy, troublesome, contemptible
issues of the puerperal labour itself! But yet, after you have pulled all
these things down to infamy, that you may affirm them to be unworthy of
God, birth will not be worse for Him than death, infancy than the cross,
punishment than nature, condemnation than the flesh. If Christ truly
suffered all this, to be born was a less thing for Him. If Christ suffered
evasively,(13) as a phantom; evasively, too, might He have been born. Such
are Marcion's chief arguments by which he makes out another Christ; and I
think that we show plainly enough that they are utterly irrelevant, when we
teach how much more truly consistent with God is the reality rather than
the falsehood of that condition(14) in which He manifested His Christ.
Since He was "the truth," He was flesh; since He was flesh, He was born.
For the points which this heresy assaults are confirmed, when the means of
the assault are destroyed. Therefore if He is to be considered in the
flesh,(15) because He was born; and born, because He is in the flesh,  and
because He is no phantom,--it follows   that He must be acknowledged as
Himself   the very Christ of the Creator, who was by the Creator's prophets
foretold as about to come in the flesh, and by the process of human
birth.(16)

CHAP.XII.--ISAIAH'S PROPHECY OF EMMANUEL. CHRIST ENTITLED TO THAT NAME.

   And challenge us first, as is your wont, to consider Isaiah's
description of Christ, while you contend that in no point does it suit.
For, to begin with, you say that Isaiah's Christ will have to be called
Emmanuel;(1) then, that He takes the riches of Damascus and the spoils of
Samaria against the king of Assyria.(2) But yet He who is come was neither
born under such a name, nor ever engaged in any warlike enterprise. I must,
however, remind you that you ought to look into the contexts(3) of the two
passages. For there is immediately added the interpretation of Emmanuel,
"God with us;" so that you have to consider not merely the name as it is
uttered, but also its meaning. The utterance is Hebrew, Emmanuel, of the
prophet's own nation; but the meaning of the word, God with us, is by the
interpretation made common property. Inquire, then, whether this  name,
God-with-us, which is Emmanuel, be not often used for the name of
Christ,(4) from the fact that Christ has enlightened the world. And I
suppose you will not deny it, inasmuch as you do yourself admit that He is
called God-with-us, that is, Emmanuel. Else if you are so foolish, that,
because with you He gets the designation God-with-us, not Emmanuel, you
therefore are unwilling to grant that He is come whose property it is to be
called Emmanuel, as if this were not the same name as God-with-us, you will
find among the Hebrew Christians, and amongst Marcionites too, that they
name Him Emmanuel when they mean Him to be called God-with-us; just indeed
as every nation, by whatever word they would express God-with-us, has
called Him Emmanuel, completing the sound in its sense. Now since Emmanuel
is God-with-us, and God-with-us is Christ, who is in us (for "as many of
you as are baptized into Christ, have put on Christ"(5)), Christ is as
properly implied in the meaning of the name, which is God-with-us, as He is
in the pronunciation of the name, which is Emmanuel. And thus it is evident
that He is now come who was foretold as Emmanuel, because what Emmanuel
signifies is come, that is to say, God-with-us.

CHAP. XIII.--ISAIAH'S PROPHECIES CONSIDERED. THE VIRGINITY OF CHRIST'S
MOTHER A SIGN. OTHER PROPHECIES ALSO SIGNS. METAPHORICAL SENSE OF PROPER
NAMES IN SUNDRY PASSAGES OF THE PROPHETS.

   You are equally led away by the sound of names,(6) when you so
understand the riches of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria, and the king
of Assyria, as if they portended that the Creator's Christ was a warrior,
not attending to the promise contained in the passage, "For before the
Child shall have knowledge to cry, My father and My mother, He shall take
away the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of
Assyria."(7) You should first examine the point of age, whether it can be
taken to represent Christ as even yet a man,(8) much less a warrior.
Although, to be sure, He might be about to call to arms by His cry as an
infant; might be about to sound the alarm of war not with a trumpet, but
with a little rattle; might he about to seek His foe, not on horseback, or
in chariot, or from parapet, but from nurse's neck or nursemaid's back, and
so be destined to subjugate Damascus and Samaria from His mother's breasts!
It is a different matter, of course, when the babes of your barbarian
Pontus spring forth to the fight. They are, I ween, taught to lance before
they lacerate;(9) swathed at first in sunshine and ointment,(10) afterwards
armed with the satchel,(11) and rationed on bread and butter!(12) Now,
since nature, certainly, nowhere grants to man to learn warfare before
life, to pillage the wealth of a Damascus before he knows his father and
mother's name, it follows that the passage in question must be deemed to be
a figurative one. Well, but nature, says he, does not permit "a virgin to
conceive," and still the prophet is believed. And indeed very properly; for
he has paved the way for the incredible thing being believed, by giving a
reason for its occurrence, in that it was to be for a sign. "Therefore,"
says he, "the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall
conceive, and bear a son."(13) Now a sign from God would not have been a
sign,(14) unless it had been some novel and prodigious thing. Then, again,
Jewish cavillers, in order to disconcert us, boldly pretend that Scripture
does not hold(15) that a virgin, but only a young woman,(16) is to conceive
and bring forth. They are, however, refuted by this consideration, that
nothing of the nature of a sign can possibly come out of what is a daily
occurrence, the pregnancy and child-bearing of a young woman. A virgin
mother is justly deemed to be proposed(1) by God as a sign, but a warlike
infant has no like claim to the distinction; for even in such a case(2)
there does not occur the character of a sign. But   after the sign of the
strange and novel birth  has been asserted, there is immediately afterwards
declared as a sign the subsequent course of the Infant,(3) who was to eat
butter and honey. Not that this indeed is of the nature of a sign, nor is
His "refusing the evil;" for this, too, is only a characteristic of
infancy.(4) But His destined capture of the riches of Damascus and the
spoil  of Samaria before the king of Assyria is no doubt a wonderful
sign.(5) Keep to the measure of His age, and seek the purport of the
prophecy, and give back also to the truth of the gospel what you have taken
away from it in the lateness of your heresy,(6) and the prophecy at once
becomes intelligible and declares its own accomplishment. Let those eastern
magi wait on the new-born Christ, presenting to Him, (although) in His
infancy, their gifts of gold and frankincense; and surely an Infant will
have received the riches of Damascus without a battle, and unarmed.

   For besides the generally known fact, that the riches of the East, that
is to say, its strength and resources, usually consist of gold and spices,
it is certainly true of the Creator, that He makes gold the riches of the
other(7) nations also. Thus He says by Zechariah:

   "And Judah shall also fight at Jerusalem and shall gather together all
the wealth of the nations round about, gold and silver."(8) Moreover,
respecting that gift of gold, David also says: "And there shall be given to
Him of the gold of Arabia;"(9) and again: "The kings of Arabia and Saba
shall offer to Him gifts."(10) For the East generally regarded the magi as
kings; and Damascus was anciently deemed to belong to Arabia, before it was
transferred to Syrophoenicia on the division of the Syrias (by Rome).(11)
Its riches Christ then received, when He received the tokens thereof in the
gold and spices; while the spoils of Samaria were the magi themselves.
These having discovered Him and honoured Him with their gifts, and on
beaded knee adored Him as their God and King, through the witness of the
star which led their way and guided them, became the spoils of Samaria,
that is to say, of idolatry, because, as it is easy enough to see,(12) they
believed in Christ. He designated idolatry under the name of Samaria, as
that city was shameful for its idolatry, through which it had then revolted
from God from the days of king Jeroboam. Nor is this an unusual manner for
the Creator, (in His Scriptures(13)) figuratively to employ names of places
as a metaphor derived from the analogy of their sins. Thus He calls the
Chief men of the Jews "rulers of Sodom," and the nation itself "people of
Gomorrah."(14) And in another passage He also says: "Thy father was an
Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite,"(15) by reason of their kindred
iniquity;(16)   although He had actually called them His sons: "I have
nourished and brought up children."(17) So likewise by Egypt is sometimes
understood, in His sense,(18) the whole world as being marked out by
superstition and a curse(19) By a similar usage Babylon also in our (St.)
John is a figure of the city of Rome, as being like (Babylon) great and
proud in royal power, and warring down the saints of God. Now it was in
accordance with this style that He called the magi by the name of
Samaritans, because (as we have said) they had practised idolatry as did
the Samaritans. Moreover, by the phrase "before or against the king of
Assyria," understand "against Herod;" against whom the magi then opposed
themselves, when they refrained from carrying him back word concerning
Christ, whom he was seeking to destroy.

CHAP. XIV.--FIGURATIVE STYLE OF CERTAIN MESSIANIC PROPHECIES IN THE
PSALMS.MILITARY METAPHORS APPLIED TO CHRIST.

   This interpretation of ours will derive confirmation, when, on your
supposing that Christ is in any passage called a warrior, from the mention
of certain arms and expressions of that sort, you weigh well the analogy of
their other meanings, and draw your conclusions accordingly. "Gird on Thy
sword," says David, "upon Thy thigh."(20) But what do you read about Christ
just before? "Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured
forth upon Thy lips."(1) It amuses me to imagine that blandishments of fair
beauty and graceful lips are ascribed to one who had to gird on His sword
for war! So likewise, when it is added, "Ride on prosperously in Thy
majesty,"(2) the reason is subjoined: "Because of truth, and meekness, and
righteousness."(3) But who shall produce these results with the sword, and
not their opposites rather--deceit, and harshness, and injury--which, it
must be confessed, are the proper business of battles? Let us see,
therefore, whether that is not some other sword, which has so different an
action. Now the Apostle John, in the Apocalypse, describes a sword which
proceeded from the mouth of God as "a doubly sharp, two-edged one."(4) This
may be understood to be the Divine Word, who is doubly edged with the two
testaments of the law and the gospel--sharpened with wisdom, hostile to the
devil, arming us against the spiritual enemies of all wickedness and
concupiscence, and cutting us off from the dearest objects for the sake of
God's holy name. If, however, you will not acknowledge John, you have our
common master Paul, who "girds our loins about with truth, and puts on us
the breastplate of righteousness, and shoes us with the preparation of the
gospel of peace, not of war; who bids us take the shield of faith,
wherewith we may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the devil, and
the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which (he says) is
the word of God."(5) This sword the Lord Himself came to send on earth, and
not peace.(6) If he is your Christ, then even he is a warrior. If he is not
a warrior, and the sword he brandishes is an allegorical one, then the
Creator's Christ in the psalm too may have been girded with the figurative
sword of the Word, without any martial gear. The above-mentioned "fairness"
of His beauty and "grace of His lips" would quite suit such a sword, girt
as it even then was upon His thigh in the passage of David, and sent as it
would one day be by Him on earth. For this is what He says: "Ride on
prosperously in Thy majesty(7)"--advancing His word into every land, so as
to call all nations: destined to prosper in the success of that faith which
received Him, and reigning, from the fact that(8) He conquered death by His
resurrection. "Thy right hand," says He, "shall wonderfully lead Thee
forth,"(9) even the might of Thy spiritual grace, whereby the knowledge of
Christ is spread. "Thine arrows are sharp;"(10) everywhere Thy precepts fly
about, Thy threatenings also, and convictions (11) of heart, pricking and
piercing each conscience. "The people shall fall under Thee,"(12) that is,
in adoration. Thus is the Creator's Christ mighty in war, and a bearer of
arms; thus also does He now take the spoils, not of Samaria alone, but of
all nations. Acknowledge, then, that His spoils are figurative, since you
have learned that His arms are allegorical. Since, therefore, both the Lord
speaks and His apostle writes such things(13) in a figurative style, we are
not rash in using His interpretations, the records(14) of which even our
adversaries admit; and thus in so far will it be Isaiah's Christ who has
come, in as far as He was not a warrior, because it is not of such a
character that He is described by Isaiah.

CHAP. XV.--THE TITLE CHRIST SUITABLE AS A NAME OF THE CREATOR'S SON, BUT
UNSUITED TO MARCION'S CHRIST.

   Touching then the discussion of His flesh, and (through that) of His
nativity, and incidentally(15) of His name Emmanuel, let this suffice.
Concerning His other names, however, and especially that of Christ, what
has the other side to say in reply? If the name of Christ is as common with
you as is the name of God--so that as the Son of both Gods may be fitly
called Christ, so each of the Fathers may be called Lord--reason will
certainly be opposed to this argument. For the name of God, as being the
natural designation of Deity, may be ascribed to all those beings for whom
a divine nature is claimed,--as, for instance, even to idols. The apostle
says: "For there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in
earth."(16) The name of Christ, however, does not arise from nature, but
from dispensation;(17) and so becomes the proper name of Him to whom it
accrues in consequence of the dispensation. Nor is it subject to be shared
in by any other God, especially a rival, and one that has a dispensation of
His own, to whom it will be also necessary that He should possess names
apart from all others. For how happens it that, after they have devised
different dispensations for two Gods they admit into this diversity of
dispensation a community of names; whereas no proof could be more useful of
two Gods being rival ones, than if there should be found coincident with
their (diverse) dispensations a diversity also of names? For that is not a
state of diverse qualities, which is not distinctly indicated(1) in the
specific meanings(2) of their designations. Whenever these are wanting,
there occurs what the Greeks call the katachresis(3) of a term, by its
improper application to what does not belong to it.(4) In God, however,
there ought, I suppose, to be no defect, no setting up of His dispensations
by katachrestic abuse of words. Who is this god, that claims for his son
names from the Creator? I say not names which do not belong to him, but
ancient and well-known names, which even in this view of them would be
unsuitable for a novel and unknown god. How is it, again, that he tells us
that "a piece of new cloth is not sewed on to an old garment," or that "new
wine is not trusted to old bottles,"(5) when he is himself patched and clad
in an old suit(6) of names? How is it he has rent off the gospel from the
law, when he is wholly invested with the law,--in the name, forsooth, of
Christ? What hindered his calling himself by some other name, seeing that
he preached another (gospel), came from another source, and refused to take
on him a real body, for the very purpose that he might not be supposed to
be the Creator's Christ? Vain, however, was his unwillingness to seem to be
He whose name he was willing to assume; since, even if he had been truly
corporeal, he would more certainly escape being taken for the Christ of the
Creator, if he had not taken on him His name. But, as it is, he rejects the
substantial verity of Him whose name he has assumed, even though he should
give a proof of that verity by his name. For Christ means anointed, and to
be anointed is certainly an affair(7) of the body. He who had not a body,
could not by any possibility have been anointed; he who could not by any
possibility have been anointed, could not in any wise have been called
Christ. It is a different thing (quite), if he only assumed the phantom of
a name too. But how, he asks, was he to insinuate himself into being
believed by the Jews, except through a name which was usual and familiar
amongst them? Then 'tis a fickle and tricksty God whom you describe! To
promote any plan by deception, is the resource of either distrust or of
maliciousness. Much more frank and simple was the conduct of the false
prophets against the Creator, when they came in His name as their own
God.(8) But I do not find that any good came of this proceeding,(9) since
they were more apt to suppose either that Christ was their own, or rather
was some deceiver, than that He was the Christ of the other god; and this
the gospel will show.

CHAP. XVI.--THE SACRED NAME JESUS MOST SUITED TO THE CHRIST OF THE CREATOR.
JOSHUA A TYPE OF HIM.

   Now if he caught at the name Christ, just as the pickpocket clutches
the dole-basket, why did he wish to be called Jesus too, by a name which
was not so much looked for by the Jews? For although we, who have by God's
grace attained to the understanding of His mysteries, acknowledge that this
name also was destined for Christ, yet, for all that, the fact was not
known to the Jews, from whom wisdom was taken away. To this day, in short,
it is Christ that they are looking for, not Jesus; and they interpret Elias
to be Christ rather than Jesus. He, therefore, who came also in a name in
which Christ was not expected, might have come only in that name which was
solely anticipated for Him.(10) But since he has mixed up the two,(11) the
expected one and the unexpected, his twofold project is defeated. For if he
be Christ for the very purpose of insinuating himself as the Creator's,
then Jesus opposes him, because Jesus was not looked for in the Christ of
the Creator; or if he be Jesus, in order that he might pass as belonging to
the other (God), then Christ hinders him, because Christ was not expected
to belong to any other than the Creator. I know not which one of these
names may be able to hold its ground.(12) In the Christ of the Creator,
however, both will keep their place, for in Him a Jesus too is found. Do
you ask, how? Learn it then here, with the Jews also who are panakers of
your heresy. When Oshea the son of Nun was destined to be the successor of
Moses, is not his old name then changed, and for the first time he is
called(13) Joshua? It is true, you say. This, then, we first observe, was a
figure of Him who was to come. For inasmuch as Jesus Christ was to
introduce a new generation(14) (because we are born in the wilderness of
this world) into the promised land which flows with milk and honey, that
is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing can be sweeter;
inasmuch, too, as this was to be brought about not by Moses, that is to
say, not by the discipline of the law, but by Joshua, by the grace of the
gospel, our circumcision being effected by a knife of stone, that is, (by
the circumcision) of Christ, for Christ is a rock (or stone), therefore
that great man,(1) who was ordained as a type of this mystery, was actually
consecrated with the figure of the Lord's own name, being called Joshua.
This name Christ Himself even then testified to be His own, when He talked
with Moses. For who was it that talked with him, but the Spirit of the
Creator, which is Christ? When He therefore spake this commandment to the
people, "Behold, I send my angel before thy face, to keep thee in the way,
and to bring thee into the land which I have prepared for thee; attend to
him, and obey his voice and do not provoke him; for he has not shunned
you,(2) since my name is upon him,"(3) He called him an angel indeed,
because of the greatness of the powers which he was to exercise, and
because of his prophetic office,(4) while announcing the will of God; but
Joshua also (Jesus), because it was a type(5) of His own future name.
Often(6) did He confirm that name of His which He had thus conferred upon
(His servant); because it was not the name of angel, nor Oshea, but Joshua
(Jesus), which He had commanded him to bear as his usual appellation for
the time to come. Since, therefore, both these names are suitable to the
Christ of the Creator, they are proportionately unsuitable to the non-
Creator's Christ; and so indeed is all the rest of (our Christ's) destined
course.(7) In short, there must now for the future be made between us that
certain and equitable rule, necessary to both sides, which shall determine
that there ought to be absolutely nothing at all in common between the
Christ of the other god and the Creator's Christ. For you will have as
great a necessity to maintain their diversity as we have to resist it,
inasmuch as you will be as unable to show that the Christ of the other god
has come, until you have prvoed him to be a far different being from the
Creator's Christ, as we, to claim Him (who has come) as the Creator's,
until we have shown Him to be such a one as the Creator has appointed. Now
respecting their names, such is our conclusion against (Marcion).(8) I
claim for myself Christ; I maintain for myself Jesus.

CHAP. XVII.--PROPHECIES IN ISAIAH AND THE PSALMS RESPECTING CHRIST'S
HUMILIATION.

   Let us compare with Scripture the rest of His dispensation. Whatever
that poor despised body(9) may be, because it was an object of touch(10)
and sight,(11) it shall be my Christ, be He inglorious, be He ignoble, be
He dishonoured; for such was it announced that He should be, both in bodily
condition and aspect. Isaiah comes to our help again: "We have announced
(His way) before Him," says he; "He is like a servant,(12) like a root in a
dry ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; we saw Him, and He had neither
form nor beauty; but His form was despised, marred above all men."(13)
Similarly the Father addressed the Son just before: "Inasmuch as many will
be astonished at Thee, so also will Thy beauty be without glory from
men,"(14) For although, in David s words, He is fairer than the children of
men,"(15) yet it is in that figurative state of spiritual grace, when He is
girded with the sword of the Spirit, which is verily His form, and beauty,
and glory. According to the same prophet, however, He is in bodily
condition "a very worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and an outcast of
the people."(16) But no internal quality of such a kind does He announce as
belonging to Him. In Him dwelt the fulness of the Spirit; therefore I
acknowledge Him to be "the rod of the stem of Jesse." His blooming flower
shall be my Christ, upon whom hath rested, according to Isaiah, "the spirit
of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
knowledge and of piety, and of the fear of the Lord."(17) Now to no man,
except Christ, would the diversity of spiritual proofs suitably apply. He
is indeed like a flower for the Spirit's grace, reckoned indeed of the stem
of Jesse, but thence to derive His descent through Mary. Now I purposely
demand of you, whether you grant to Him the destination(18) of all this
humiliation, and suffering, and tranquillity, from which He will be the
Christ of Isaiah,--a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, who was led
as a sheep to the slaughter, and who, like a lamb before the shearer,
opened not His mouth;(1) who did not struggle nor cry, nor was His voice
heard in the street who broke not the bruised reed--that is, the shattered
faith of the Jews--nor quenched the smoking flax--that is, the freshly-
kindled(2) ardour of the Gentiles. He can be none other than the Man who
was foretold. It is right that His conduct(3) be investigated according to
the rule of Scripture, distinguishable as it is unless I am mistaken, by
the twofold operation of preaching(4) and of miracle. But the treatment of
both these topics I shall so arrange as to postpone, to the chapter wherein
I have determined to discuss the actual gospel of Marcion, the
consideration of His wonderful doctrines and miracles--with a view,
however, to our present purpose. Let us here, then, in general terms
complete the subject which we had entered upon, by indicating, as we pass
on,(5) how Christ was fore-announced by Isaiah as a preacher: "For who is
there among you," says he, "that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice
of His Son?"(6) And likewise as a healer: "For," says he, "He   hath taken
away our infirmities, and carried  our sorrows."(7)

CHAP. XVIII.(8)--TYPES OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST. ISAAC; JOSEPH; JACOB AGAINST
SIMEON AND LEVI; MOSES PRAYING AGAINST AMALEK; THE BRAZEN SERPENT.

   On the subject of His death,(9) I suppose, you endeavour to introduce a
diversity of opinion, simply because you deny that the suffering of the
cross was predicted of the Christ of the Creator, and because you contend,
moreover, that it is not to be believed that the Creator would expose His
Son to that kind of death on which He had Himself pronounced a curse.
"Cursed," says He, "is every one who hangeth on a tree."(10) But what is
meant by this curse, worthy as it is of the simple prediction of the cross,
of which we are now mainly inquiring, I defer to consider, because in
another passage(11) we have given the reason(12) of the thing preceded by
proof. First, I shall offer a full explanation(13) of the types. And no
doubt it was proper that this mystery should be prophetically set forth by
types, and indeed chiefly by that method: for in proportion to its
incredibility would it be a stumbling-block, if it were set forth in bare
prophecy; and in proportion too, to its grandeur, was the need of obscuring
it in shadow,(14) that the difficulty of understanding it might lead to
prayer for the grace of God. First, then, Isaac, when he was given up by
his father as an offering, himself carried the wood for his own death. By
this act he even then was setting forth the death of Christ, who was
destined by His Father as a sacrifice, and carried the cross whereon He
suffered. Joseph likewise was a type of Christ, not indeed on this ground
(that I may not delay my course(15)), that he suffered persecution for the
cause of God from his brethren, as Christ did from His brethren after the
flesh, the Jews; but when he is blessed by his father in these words: "His
glory is that of a bullock; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them
shall he push the nations to the very ends of the earth,"(16)--he was not,
of course, designated as a mere unicorn with its one horn, or a minotaur
with two; but Christ was indicated in him--a bullock in respect of both His
characteristics: to some as severe as a Judge, to others gentle as a
Saviour, whose horns were the extremities of His cross. For of the antenna,
which is a part of a cross, the ends are called horns; while the midway
stake of the whole frame is the unicorn. By this virtue, then, of His
cross, and in this manner "horned," He is both now pushing all nations
through faith, bearing them away from earth to heaven; and will then push
them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. He will
also, according to another passage in the same scripture, be a bullock,
when He is spiritually interpreted to be Jacob against Simeon and Levi,
which means against the scribes and the Pharisees; for it was from them
that these last derived their origin.(17) Like Simeon and Levi, they
consummated their wickedness by their heresy, with which they persecuted
Christ. "Into their counsel let not my soul  enter; to their assembly let
not my heart be united: for in their anger they slew men," that is, the
prophets; "and in their self-will they hacked the sinews of a bullock,"(18)
that is, of Christ. For against Him did they wreak their fury after they
had slain His prophets, even by affixing Him with nails to the cross.
Otherwise, it is an idle thing(1) when, after slaying men, he inveighs
against them for the torture of a bullock! Again, in the case of Moses,
wherefore did he at that moment particularly, when Joshua was fighting
Amalek, pray in a sitting posture with outstretched hands, when in such a
conflict it would surely have been more seemly to have bent the knee, and
smitten the breast, and to have fallen on the face to the ground, and in
such prostration to have offered prayer?  Wherefore, but because in a
battle fought in the name of that Lord who was one day to fight against the
devil, the shape was necessary of that very cross through which Jesus was
to win the victory? Why, once more, did the same Moses, after prohibiting
the likeness of everything, set up the golden serpent on the pole; and as
it hung there, propose it as an object to be looked at for a cure?(2) Did
he not here also intend to show the power of our Lord's cross, whereby that
old serpent the devil was vanquished,--whereby also to every man who was
bitten by spiritual serpents, but who yet turned with an eye of faith to
it, was proclaimed a  cure from the bite of sin, and health for evermore?

CHAP. XIX.--PROPHECIES OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST.

   Come now, when you read in the words of David, how that "the Lord
reigneth from the tree,"(3) I want to know what you understand by it.
Perhaps you think some wooden(4) king of the Jews is meant!--and not
Christ, who overcame death by His suffering on the cross, and thence
reigned! Now, although death reigned from Adam even to Christ, why may not
Christ be said to have reigned from the tree, from His having shut up the
kingdom of death by dying upon the tree of His cross? Likewise Isaiah also
says: "For unto us a child is born."(5) But what is there unusual in this,
unless he speaks of the Son of God? "To us is given He whose government is
upon His shoulder."(5) Now, what king is there who bears the ensign of his
dominion upon his shoulder, and not rather upon his head as a diadem, or in
his hand as a sceptre, or else as a mark in some royal apparel? But the one
new King of the new ages, Jesus Christ, carried on His shoulder both the
power and the excellence of His new glory, even His cross; so that,
according to our former prophecy, He might thenceforth reign from the tree
as Lord. This tree it is which Jeremiah likewise gives you intimation of,
when he prophesies to the Jews, who should say, "Come, let us destroy the
tree with the fruit, (the bread) thereof,"(6) that is, His body. For so did
God in your own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body
bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given
to His body the figure of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively
turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an
interpretation of the mystery. If you require still further prediction of
the Lord's cross, the twenty-first Psalm(7) is sufficiently able to afford
it to you, containing as it does the entire passion of Christ, who was even
then prophetically declaring(8) His glory. "They pierced," says He, "my
hands and my feet,"(9) which is the special cruelty of the cross. And
again, when He implores His Father's help, He says, "Save me from the
lion's mouth," that is, the jaws of death, "and my humiliation from the
horns of the unicorns;" in other words, from the extremities of the cross,
as we have shown above. Now, David himself did not suffer this cross, nor
did any other king of the Jews; so that you cannot suppose that this is the
prophecy of any other's passion than His who alone was so notably crucified
by the nation. Now should the heretics, in their obstinacy,(10) reject and
despise all these interpretations, I will grant to them that the Creator
has given us no signs of the cross of His Christ; but they will not prove
from this concession that He who was crucified was another (Christ), unless
they could somehow show that this death was predicted as His by their own
god, so that from the diversity of predictions there might be maintained to
be a diversity of sufferers,(11) and thereby also a diversity of persons.
But since there is no prophecy of even Marcion's Christ, much less of his
cross, it is enough for my Christ that there is a prophecy merely of death.
For, from the fact that the kind of death is not declared, it was possible
for the death of the cross to have been still intended, which would then
have to be assigned to another (Christ), if the prophecy had had reference
to another. Besides,(12) if he should be unwilling to allow that the death
of my Christ was predicted, his confusion must be the greater(1) if he
announces that his own Christ indeed died, whom he denies to have had a
nativity, whilst denying that my Christ is mortal, though he allows Him to
be capable of birth. However, I will show him the death, and burial, and
resurrection of my Christ all(2) indicated in a single sentence of Isaiah,
who says, "His sepulture was removed from the midst of them." Now there
could have been no sepulture without death, and no removal of sepulture
except by resurrection. Then, finally, he added: "Therefore He shall have
many for his inheritance, and He shall divide the spoil of the many,
because He poured out His soul unto death."(3) For there is here set forth
the cause of this favour to Him, even that it was to recompense Him  for
His suffering of death. It was equally shown that He was to obtain this
recompense for His death, was certainly to obtain it after His death by
means of the resurrection.(4)

CHAP. XX.(5)--THE SUBSEQUENT INFLUENCE Or CHRIST'S DEATH IN THE WORLD
PREDICTED. THE SURE MERCIES OF DAVID. WHAT THESE ARE.

   It is sufficient for my purpose to have traced thus far the course of
Christ's dispensation in these particulars. This has proved Him to be such
a one as prophecy announced He should be, so that He ought not to be
regarded in any other character than that which prediction assigned to Him;
and the result of this agreement between the facts of His course and the
Scriptures of the Creator should be the restoration of belief in them from
that prejudice which has, by contributing to diversity of opinion, either
thrown doubt upon, or led to a denial of, a considerable part of them And
now we go further and build up the superstructure of those kindred
events(6) out of the Scriptures of the Creator which were predicted and
destined to happen after Christ. For the dispensation would not be found
complete, if He had not come after whom it had to run on its course.(7)
Look at all nations from the vortex of human error emerging out of it up to
the Divine Creator, the Divine Christ, and deny Him to be the object of
prophecy, if you dare. At once there will occur to you the Father's promise
in the Psalms: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me,
and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost
parts of the earth for Thy possession."(8) You will not be able to put in a
claim for some son of David being here meant, rather than Christ; or for
the ends of the earth being promised to David, whose kingdom was confined
to the Jewish nation simply, rather than to Christ, who now embraces the
whole world in the faith of His gospel. So again He says by Isaiah: "I have
given Thee for a dispensation of the people, for a light of the Gentiles,
to open the eyes of the blind," that is, those that be in error, "to bring
out the prisoners from the prison," that is, to free them from sin, "and
from the  prison-house," that is, of death, "those that sit in darkness"--
even that of ignorance.(9) If these things are accomplished through Christ,
they would not have been designed in prophecy for any other than Him
through whom they have their accomplishment. In another passage He also
says: "Behold, I have set Him as a testimony to the nations,  a prince and
commander to the nations; nations which know Thee not shall invoke Thee,
and peoples shall run together unto Thee."(10) You will not interpret these
words of David, because He previously said, "I will make an everlasting
covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David."(11) Indeed, you will be
obliged from these words all the more to understand that Christ is reckoned
to spring from David by carnal descent, by reason of   His birth(12) of the
Virgin Mary. Touching  this promise of Him, there is the oath to David in
the psalm, "Of the fruit of thy body(13) will I set upon thy throne."(14)
What body is meant? David's own? Certainly not. For David was not to give
birth to a son.(15) Nor his wife's either. For instead of saying, "Of the
fruit of thy body," he would then have rather said, "Of the fruit of thy
wife's body." But by mentioning his(16) body, it follows that He pointed to
some one of his race of whose body the flesh of Christ was to be the fruit,
which bloomed forth from(17) Mary's womb. He named the fruit of the body
(womb) alone, because it was peculiarly fruit of the womb, of the womb only
in fact, and not of the husband also; and he refers the womb (body) to
David, as to the chief of the race and father of the family. Because it
could not consist with a virgin's condition   to consort her with a
husband,(18) He therefore attributed the body (womb) to the father. That
new dispensation, then, which is found in Christ now, will prove to be what
the Creator then promised under the appellation of "the sure mercies of
David," which were Christ's, inasmuch as Christ sprang from David, or
rather His very flesh itself was David's "sure mercies," consecrated by
religion, and "sure" after its resurrection. Accordingly the prophet
Nathan, in the first of Kings,(1) makes a promise to David for his seed,
"which shall proceed," says he, "out of thy bowels."(2) Now, if you explain
this simply of Solomon, you will send me into a fit of laughter. For David
will evidently have brought forth Solomon! But is not Christ here
designated the seed of David, as of that womb which was derived from David,
that is, Mary's? Now, because Christ rather than any other(3) was to build
the temple of God, that is to say, a holy manhood, wherein God's Spirit
might dwell as in a better temple, Christ rather than David's son Solomon
was to be looked for as(4) the Son of God. Then, again, the throne for ever
with the kingdom for ever is more suited to Christ than to Solomon, a mere
temporal king. From Christ, too, God's mercy did not depart, whereas on
Solomon even God's anger alighted, after his luxury and idolatry. For
Satan(5) stirred up an Edomite as an enemy against him. Since, therefore,
nothing of these things is compatible with Solomon, but only with Christ,
the method of our interpretations will certainly be true; and the very
issue of the facts shows that they were clearly predicted of Christ. And so
in Him we shall have "the sure mercies of David." Him, not David, has God
appointed for a testimony to the nations; Him, for a prince and commander
to the nations, not David, who ruled over Israel alone. It is Christ whom
all nations now invoke, which knew Him not; Christ to whom all races now
betake themselves, whom they were ignorant of before. It is impossible that
that should be said to be future, which you see (daily) coming to pass.

CHAP. XXI.--THE CALL OF THE GENTILES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE GOSPEL
FORETOLD.

   So you cannot get out of this notion of yours a basis for your
difference between the two Christs, as if the Jewish Christ were ordained
by the Creator for the restoration of the people alone(6) from its
dispersion, whilst yours was appointed by the supremely good God for the
liberation of the whole human race. Because, after all, the earliest
Christians are found on the side of the Creator, not of Marcion,(7) all
nations being called to His kingdom, from the fact that God set up that
kingdom from the tree (of the cross), when no Cerdon was yet born, much
less a Marcion. However, when you are refuted on the call of the nations,
you betake yourself to proselytes. You ask, who among the nations can turn
to the Creator, when those whom the prophet names are proselytes of
individually different and private condition?(8) "Behold," says Isaiah,
"the proselytes shall come unto me through--Thee," showing that they were
even proselytes who were to find their way to God through Christ. But
nations (Gentiles) also, like ourselves, had likewise their mention (by the
prophet) as trusting in Christ. "And in His name," says he, "shall the
Gentiles trust." Besides, the proselytes whom you substitute for the
nations in prophecy, are not in the habit of trusting in Christ's name, but
in the dispensation of Moses, from whom comes their instruction. But it was
in the last days that the choice(9) of the nations had its
commencement.(10) In these very words Isaiah says: "And it shall come to
pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord," that is, God's
eminence, "and the house of God," that is, Christ, the Catholic temple of
God, in which God is worshipped, "shall be established upon the mountains,"
over all the eminences of virtues and powers; "and all nations shall come
unto it; and many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the
mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will
teach us His way, and we will walk in it: for out of Sion shall go forth
the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."(11) The gospel will be
this "way," of the new law and the new word in Christ, no longer in Moses.
"And He shall judge among the nations," even concerning their error. "And
these shall rebuke a large nation," that of the Jews themselves and their
proselytes. "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their
spears(12) into pruning-hooks;" in other words, they shall change into
pursuits of moderation and peace the dispositions of injurious minds, and
hostile tongues, and all kinds of evil, and blasphemy. "Nation shall not
lift up sword against nation,"  shall not stir up discord. "Neither shall
they learn war any more,"(1) that is, the provocation of hostilities; so
that you here learn that Christ is promised not as powerful in war, but
pursuing peace. Now you must deny either that these things were predicted,
although they are plainly seen, or  that they have been accomplished,
although you read of them; else, if you cannot deny either one fact or the
other, they must have been accomplished in Him of whom they were predicted.
For look at the entire course of His call up to the present time from its
beginning, how it is addressed to the nations (Gentiles) who are in these
last days approaching to God the Creator, and not to proselytes, whose
election(2) was rather an event of the earliest days. Verily the apostles
have annulled(3) that belief of yours.

CHAP. XXII.--THE SUCCESS OF THE APOSTLES, AND THEIR SUFFERINGS IN THE CAUSE
OF THE GOSPEL, FORETOLD.

   You have the work of the apostles also predicted: "How beautiful are
the feet of them which preach the gospel of peace, which bring good tidings
of good,"(4) not of war nor evil tidings. In response to which is the
psalm, "Their sound is gone through all the earth, and their words to the
ends of the world;"(5) that is, the words of them who carry round about the
law that proceeded from Sion and the Lord's word from Jerusalem, in order
that that might come to pass which was written: "They who were far from my
righteousness, have come near to my righteousness and truth."(6) When the
apostles girded their loins for this business, they renounced the elders
and rulers and priests of the Jews. Well, says he, but was it not above all
things that they might preach the other god? Rather(7) (that they might
preach) that very self-same God, whose scripture they were with all their
might fulfilling! "Depart ye, depart ye," exclaims Isaiah; "go ye out from
thence, and touch not the unclean thing," that is blasphemy against Christ;
"Go ye out of the midst of her," even of the synagogue" Be ye separate who
bear the vessels of the Lord."(8)  For already had the Lord, according to
the preceding words (of the prophet), revealed His Holy One with His arm,
that is to say, Christ by His mighty power, in the eyes of the nations, so
that all the(9) nations and the utmost parts of the earth have seen the
salvation, which was from God. By thus departing from Judaism itself, when
they exchanged the obligations and burdens of the law for the liberty of
the gospel, they were fulfilling the psalm, "Let us burst their bonds
asunder, and cast away their yoke from us;" and this indeed (they did)
after that "the heathen raged, and the people imagined vain devices;" after
that "the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took their
counsel together against the Lord, and against His Christ."(10) What did
the apostles thereupon suffer? You answer: Every sort of iniquitous
persecutions, from men that belonged indeed to that Creator who was the
adversary of Him whom they were preaching. Then why does the Creator, if an
adversary of Christ, not only predict that the apostles should incur this
suffering, but even express His displeasure(11) thereat? For He ought
neither to predict the course of the other god, whom, as you contend, He
knew not, nor to have expressed displeasure at that which He had taken care
to bring about. "See how the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to
heart; and how merciful men are taken away, and no man considereth. For the
righteous man has been removed from the evil person."(12) Who is this but
Christ? "Come, say they, let us take away the righteous, because He is not
for our turn, (and He is clean contrary to our doings)."(13) Premising,
therefore, and likewise subjoining the fact that Christ suffered, He
foretold that His just ones should suffer equally with Him--both the
apostles and all the faithful in succession; and He signed them with that
very seal of which Ezekiel spake: "The Lord said unto me, Go through the
gate, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set the mark Tau upon the
foreheads of the men."(14) Now the Greek letter Tau and our own letter T is
the very form of the cross, which He predicted would be the sign on our
foreheads in the true Catholic Jerusalem,(1) in which, according to the
twenty-first Psalm, the brethren of Christ or children of God  would
ascribe glory to God the Father, in the person of Christ Himself addressing
His Father; "I will declare Thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the
congregation will I sing praise unto Thee." For that which had to come to
pass in our day in His name, and by His Spirit, He rightly foretold would
be of Him. And a little afterwards He says: "My praise shall be of Thee in
the great congregation."(2) In the sixty-seventh Psalm He says again: "In
the congregations bless ye the Lord God."(3) So that with this agrees also
the prophecy of Malachi: "I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord;
neither will I accept your offerings: for from the rising of the sun, even
unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles;
and in every place sacrifice shall be offered unto my name, and a pure
offering"(4)--such as the ascription of glory, and blessing, and praise,
and hymns. Now, inasmuch as all these things are also found amongst you,
and the sign upon the forehead,(5) and the sacraments of the church, and
the offerings of the pure sacrifice, you ought now to burst forth, and
declare that the Spirit of the Creator prophesied of your Christ.

CHAP. XXIII.--THE DISPERSION OF THE JEWS, AND THEIR DESOLATE CONDITION FOR
REJECTING CHRIST, FORETOLD.

   Now, since you join the Jews in denying that their Christ has come,
recollect also what is that end which they were predicted as about to bring
on themselves after the time of Christ, for the impiety wherewith they both
rejected and slew Him. For it began to come to pass from that day, when,
according to Isaiah, "a man threw away his idols of gold and of silver,
which they made into useless and hurtful objects of worship;"(6) in other
words, from the time when he threw away his idols after the truth had been
made clear by Christ. Consider whether what follows in the prophet has not
received its fulfilment: "The Lord of hosts hath taken away from Judah and
from Jerusalem, amongst other   things, both the prophet and the wise
artificer;"(7) that is, His Holy Spirit, who builds the church, which is
indeed the temple, and household and city of God. For thenceforth God's
grace failed amongst them; and "the clouds were commanded to rain no rain
upon the vineyard" of Sorech; to withhold, that is, the graces of heaven,
that they shed no blessing upon "the house of Israel," which had but
produced "the thorns" wherewith it had crowned the Lord, and "instead of
righteousness, the cry" wherewith it had hurried Him away to the cross.(8)
And so in this manner the law and the prophets were until John, but the
clews of divine grace were withdrawn from the nation. After his time their
madness still continued, and the name of the Lord was blasphemed by them,
as saith the Scripture: "Because of you my name is continually blasphemed
amongst the nations"(9) (for from them did the blasphemy originate);
neither in the interval from Tiberius to Vespasian did they learn
repentance.(10) Therefore "has their land become desolate, their cities are
burnt with fire, their country strangers are devouring before their own
eyes; the daughter of Sion has been deserted like a cottage in a vineyard,
or a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,"(11) ever since the time when "Israel
acknowledged not the Lord, and the people understood Him not, but forsook
Him, and provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger."(12) So likewise that
conditional threat of the sword, "If ye refuse and hear me not, the sword
shall devour you,"(13) has proved that it was Christ, for rebellion against
whom they have perished. In the fifty-eighth Psalm He demands of the Father
their dispersion: "Scatter them in Thy power."(14) By Isaiah He also says,
as He finishes a prophecy of their consumption by fire:(15) "Because of me
has this happened to you; ye shall lie down in sorrow."(16) But all this
would be unmeaning enough, if they suffered this retribution not on account
of Him, who had in prophecy assigned their suffering to His own cause, but
for the sake of the Christ of the other god. Well, then, although you
affirm that it is the Christ of the other god who was driven to the cross
by the powers and authorities of the Creator, as it were by hostile beings,
still I have to say, See how manifestly He was defended(17) by the Creator:
there were given to Him both "the wicked for His burial," even those who
had strenuously maintained that His corpse had been stolen, "and the rich
for His death,"(1) even those who had redeemed Him from the treachery of
Judas, as well as from the lying report of the soldiers that His body had
been taken away. Therefore these things either did not happen to the Jews
on His account, in which case you will be refuted by the sense of the
Scriptures tallying with the issue of the facts and the order of the times,
or else they did happen on His account, and then the Creator could not have
inflicted the vengeance except for His own Christ; nay, He must have rather
had a reward for Judas, if it had been his master's enemy whom they put to
death. At all events,(2) if the Creator's Christ has not come yet, on whose
account the prophecy dooms them to such sufferings, they will have to
endure the sufferings when He shall have come. Then where will there be a
daughter of Sion to be reduced to desolation, for there is none now to be
found? Where will there be cities to be burnt with fire, for they are now
in heaps?(3) Where a nation to be dispersed, which is already in
banishment? Restore to Judaea its former state, that the Creator's Christ
may find it, and then you may contend that another Christ has come. But
then, again,(4) how is it that He can have permitted to range through(5)
His own heaven one whom He was some day to put to death on His own earth,
after the more noble and glorious region of His kingdom had been violated,
and His own very palace and sublimest height had been trodden by him? Or
was it only in appearance rather that he did this?(6) God is no doubt(7) a
jealous God! Yet he gained the victory. You should blush with shame, who
put your faith in a vanquished god! What have you to hope for from him, who
was not strong enough to protect himself? For it was either through his
infirmity that he was  crushed by the powers and human agents of the
Creator, or else through maliciousness, in order that he might fasten so
great a stigma on them by his endurance of their wickedness.

CHAP. XXV.--CHRIST'S MILLENNIAL AND HEAVENLY GLORY IN COMPANY WITH HIS
SAINTS.

   Yes, certainly,(8) you say, I do hope from Him that which amounts in
itself to a proof of the diversity (of Christs), God's kingdom in an
everlasting and heavenly possession. Besides, your Christ promises to the
Jews their primitive condition, with the recovery of their country; and
after this life's course is over, repose in Hades(9) in Abraham's bosom.
Oh, most excellent God, when He restores in amnesty(10) what He took away
in wrath! Oh, what a God is yours, who both wounds and heals, creates evil
and makes peace! Oh, what a God, that is merciful even down to Hades! I
shall have something to say about Abraham's bosom in the proper place.(11)
As for the restoration of Judaea, however, which even the Jews themselves,
induced by the names of places and countries, hope for just as it is
described,(12) it would be tedious to state at length(13) how the
figurative(14) interpretation is spiritually applicable to Christ and His
church, and to the character and fruits thereof; besides, the subject has
been regularly treated(15) in another work, which we entitle De Spe
Fidelium.(16) At present, too, it would be superfluous(17) for this reason,
that our inquiry relates to what is promised in heaven, not on earth. But
we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although
before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be
after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of
Jerusalem,(18) "let down from heaven,"(19) which the apostle also calls
"our mother from above;"(20) and, while declaring that our poli'teuma, or
citizenship, is in heaven,(21) he predicates of it(22) that it is really a
city in heaven. This both Ezekiel had knowledge of(23) and the Apostle John
beheld.(24) And the word of the new prophecy which is a part of our
belief,(25) attests how it foretold that there would be for a sign a
picture of this very city exhibited. to view previous to its manifestation.
This prophecy, indeed, has been very lately fulfilled in an expedition to
the East.(26) For it is evident from the testimony of even heathen
witnesses, that in Judaea there was suspended in the sky a city early every
morning for forty days. As the day advanced, the entire figure of its walls
would wane gradually,(1) and sometimes it would vanish instantly.(2) We say
that this city has been provided by God for receiving the saints on their
resurrection,  and refreshing them with the abundance of all really
spiritual blessings, as a recompense for those which in the world we have
either despised or lost; since it is both just and God-worthy that His
servants should have their joy in the place where they have also suffered
affliction for His name's sake. Of the heavenly kingdom this is the
process.(3) After its thousand years are over, within which period is
completed the resurrection of the saints, who rise sooner or later
according to their deserts there will ensue the destruction of the world
and the conflagration of all things at the judgment: we shall then be
changed in a moment into the substance of angels, even by the investiture
of an incorruptible nature, and so be removed to that kingdom in heaven of
which we have now been treating, just as if it had not been predicted by
the Creator, and as if it were proving Christ to belong to the other god
and as if he were the first and sole revealer of it. But now learn that it
has been, in fact, predicted by the Creator, and that even without
prediction it has a claim upon our faith in respect of(4) the Creator. What
appears to be probable to you, when Abraham's seed, after the primal
promise of being like the sand of the sea for multitude, is destined
likewise. to an equality with the stars of heaven--are not these the
indications both of an earthly and a heavenly dispensation?(5) When Isaac,
in blessing his son Jacob, says, "God give thee of the dew of heaven, and
the fatness of the earth,"(6) are there not in his words examples of both
kinds of blessing? Indeed, the very form of the blessing is in this
instance worthy of notice. For in relation to Jacob, who is the type of the
later and more excellent people, that is to say ourselves,(7) first comes
the promise of the heaenly dew, and afterwards that about the fatness of
the earth. So are we first invited to heavenly blessings when we are
separated from the world, and afterwards we thus find ourselves in the way
of obtaining also earthly blessings. And your own gospel likewise has it in
this wise: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and these things shall be
added unto you."(8) But to Esau the blessing promised is an earthly one,
which he supplements with a heavenly, after the fatness of the earth,
saying, "Thy dwelling shall be also of the dew of heaven."(9) For the
dispensation of the Jews (who were in Esau, the prior of the sons in birth,
but the later in affection(10)) at first was imbued with earthly blessings
through the law, and afterwards brought round to heavenly ones through the
gospel by faith. When Jacob sees in his dream the steps of a ladder set
upon the earth, and reaching to heaven, with angels ascending and
descending thereon, and the Lord standing above, we shall without
hesitation venture to suppose,(11) that by this ladder the Lord has in
judgment appointed  that the way to heaven is shown to men,  whereby some
may attain to it, and others fall therefrom. For why, as soon as he awoke
out of his sleep, and shook through a dread of the spot, does he fall to an
interpretation of his dream? He exclaims, "How terrible is this place!" And
then adds, "This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of
heaven!"(12) For he had seen Christ the Lord, the temple of God, and also
the gate by whom heaven is entered. Now surely he would not have mentioned
the gate of heaven, if heaven is not entered in the dispensation of the(13)
Creator. But there is now a gate provided by Christ, which admits and
conducts to glory. Of this Amos says: "He buildeth His ascensions into
heaven;"(14) certainly not for Himself alone, but for His people also, who
will be with Him. "And Thou shall bind them about Thee," says he, "like the
adornment of a bride."(15) Accordingly the Spirit, admiring such as soar up
to the celestial realms by these ascensions, says, "They fly, as if they
were kites; they fly as clouds, and as young doves, unto me"(16)--that is,
simply like a dove.(17) For we shall, according to the apostle, be caught
up into the clouds to meet the Lord (even the Son of man, who shall come in
the clouds, according to Daniel and so shall we ever be with the Lord,(19)
so long as He remains both on the earth and in heaven, who, against such as
are thankless for both one promise and the other, calls the elements
themselves to witness: "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth."(1) Now, for
my own part indeed, even though Scripture held out no hand of heavenly hope
to me (as, in fact, it so often does), I should still possess a sufficient
presumption(2) of even this promise, in my present enjoyment of the earthly
gift; and I should look out for something also of the heavenly, from Him
who is the God of heaven as well as of earth. I should thus believe that
the Christ who promises the higher blessings is (the Son) of Him who had
also promised the lower ones; who  had, moreover, afforded proofs of
greater gifts by smaller ones; who had reserved for His Christ alone this
revelation(3) of a (perhaps(4)) unheard of kingdom, so that, while the
earthly glory was announced by His servants, the heavenly might have God
Himself for its messenger. You, however, argue for another Christ, from the
very circumstance that He proclaims a new kingdom. You ought first to bring
forward some example of His beneficence,(5) that I may have no good reason
for doubting the credibility of the great promise, which you say ought to
be hoped for; nay, it is before all things necessary that you should prove
that a heaven belongs to Him, whom you declare to be a promiser of heavenly
things. As it is, you invite us to dinner, but do not point out your house;
you assert a kingdom, but show us no royal state.(6) Can it be that your
Christ promises a kingdom of heaven, without having a heaven; as He
displayed Himself man, without having flesh? O what a phantom from first to
last!(7) O hollow pretence of a mighty promise!


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland beginning in
1867. (ANF 3, Roberts and Donaldson). The digital version is by The
Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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